Chip-maker Nvidia saw its share price rise more than 4 per cent last night to set a new record-high share price for the world’s most valuable public company.
Nvidia shares closed at $154.31, comfortably surpassing its previous high of $149.43, set in January. It also means the new market capitalisation value of the firm is $3.76tn (£2.74tn), putting it firmly on track to become the world’s first $4tn company.
Over the past few years, Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple have traded places as the world’s most valuable business, but it’s the company run by Jensen Huang which has emerged strongest following the deep sell-off in tech stocks earlier this year on the back of Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
Nvidia in particular had also seen its share price initially lowered after the emergence of DeepSeek AI, but since early April has now surged by around 64 per cent, compared to a 39 per cent rise for Microsoft and 17 per cent for Apple. In pre-market trading, Nvidia sales are projected to rise a further 0.2 per cent on Thursday when stock markets open.
A Nasdaq-listed company, Nvidia was originally a graphics card company, particularly useful for gaming and early multimedia computers in the 1990s. Later it developed or helped develop technologies including Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and parallel processing, before more recently being a leader in expanded computer graphics power and infrastructure for artificial intelligence.
The modern day Nvidia generates revenues through several areas of the business, including gaming, professional visualisation and automotive and robotic software and chips.
By far the biggest profits, however, come from the data centre, which includes the department which makes the semiconductor chips and other infrastructure powering the AI revolution.
In the company’s most recent quarterly report, the other three sections generated sales of approximately $4.9bn (£3.6bn) between them.
The data centre generated $39.1bn (£28.5bn) alone across that three-month period.
While a leader in the semiconductor industry, Nvidia has faced some challenges. Every major business and nation in the world is investing in AI and many use Nvidia chips, but the US has placed export restrictions on some of them to China. A recent change to that directive is expected to cost the company around $5bn in lost sales.
There have also been questions of how long the vast investment in AI chips can continue, though Nvidia has continued to develop improved technologies and is also investing in companies who themselves are producing software or hardware as the next phase of the AI race.
