Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia. Lam Yik Fei—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Step aside, Alphabet. Out of the way, Amazon. There’s a new member of the most-valuable companies club in the U.S.
Fueled by investor fanaticism over artificial intelligence, Nvidia stock has soared to catapult the company in the market cap rankings. As of the end of trading Wednesday, the chipmaker was the third-most valuable company in America, unseating Google parent Alphabet from that position.
The climb comes just a day after Nvidia surpassed Amazon.
Nvidia, as of 11:00 a.m. EST Thursday, boasts a market cap of $1.8 trillion. (Alphabet sits at $1.77 trillion and Amazon is at $1.75 trillion.) The company is unlikely to advance beyond third place anytime soon, though.
Microsoft currently boasts a market cap of over $3 trillion and Apple is valued at $2.81 trillion.
In the global rankings, Nvidia is also bested by the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco ($2.07 trillion).
In the past two months, Nvidia has seen its market capitalization increase by basically the entire worth of Tesla. The company’s shares are up over 51% year to date as demand for its chips by makers of artificial intelligence tools continues to surge. Nvidia is the top-performing component of the Nasdaq 100 Index this year, just as it was over 2023, when shares more than tripled.
There certainly seems to be more room to grow as well. Revenue is expected to climb by 120% in fiscal 2024, with another 60% jump expected next year. Earlier this week, UBS lifted its target to $850 from $580, and also increased its estimates for earnings per share. And Mizuho Securities raised its target to $825 from $625.
Shares were slightly lower on Thursday, down 1% in midmorning trading.
