NVIDIA became the first company in the world to have a market capitalization of $4 trillion on Wednesday. Their milestone comes barely two years after they hit a $1 trillion valuation for the first time.
They have surpassed both Apple and Microsoft, who have come close to hitting the $4 trillion mark. Apple closed with a market cap of $3.9 trillion in 2024, and Microsoft had a cap of $3.7 trillion as of last week.
NVIDIA is an American technology company that designs graphics processing units (GPUs), powerful chips originally used for rendering video game graphics. Today, those same chips are the backbone of artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing, and modern data centers. Daily technology is reliant on its chips, from electronics like computers and cell phones to medical equipment to government defense technology and AI models.
As a matter of fact, NVIDIA is currently competing with Chinese companies to lead the world in AI development and chip manufacturing. Essentially, a modern arms race.
One Chinese group, DeepSeek Matrix, made waves in 2024 by claiming it could build AI infrastructure, including chips, comparable to NVIDIA’s, but at a fraction of the cost. The announcement sparked excitement and speculation that China might finally rise as a solid competitor and sent NVIDIA's stock plummeting. But so far, there has been no evidence DeepSeek has produced anything close to NVIDIA’s high-performance H100 chips. Like most of China’s top AI labs, DeepSeek continues to rely on NVIDIA hardware, often training its models abroad in Singapore to skirt U.S. export restrictions.
NVIDIA’s ascent to a $4 trillion valuation isn’t simply a financial milestone; it’s a signal that the future of technology is being shaped by whoever controls the most advanced AI chips. For now, NVIDIA sits firmly at the pinnacle, its chips powering the digital revolution that’s redefining everything from how we work to how nations compete. The question is no longer if AI will change the world, but who will build the engines that drive it forward. And right now, that engine has NVIDIA’s name stamped on it.
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