Nvidia hits $5 trillion valuation as AI boom powers meteoric rise

By Niket Nishant and Rashika Singh

(Reuters) -Nvidia made history on Wednesday as the first company to reach $5 trillion in market value, powered by a rally that has cemented its place at the center of the global artificial intelligence boom.

The Wall Street milestone underscores the company's swift transformation from a niche graphics-chip designer into the backbone of the global AI industry, turning CEO Jensen Huang into a Silicon Valley icon and making its advanced chips a flashpoint in the tech rivalry between the U.S. and China.

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, Nvidia's shares have climbed 12-fold as the AI frenzy propelled the S&P 500 to record highs, igniting a debate on whether frothy tech valuations could lead to the next big bubble.

The new milestone, coming just three months after Nvidia breached the $4 trillion mark, would surpass the total cryptocurrency market value.

"Nvidia hitting a $5 trillion market cap is more than a milestone; it's a statement, as Nvidia has gone from chip maker to industry creator," said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, which holds shares in the company.

"The market continues to underestimate the scale of the opportunity, and Nvidia remains one of the best ways to play the AI theme."

After a string of recent announcements solidified its dominance in the AI race, shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company ended Wednesday's session up 3% at $207.04, giving it a stock market value of $5.03 trillion.

Huang announced $500 billion in AI chip orders on Tuesday and said he plans to build seven supercomputers for the U.S. government. 

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to discuss Nvidia's Blackwell chip with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday. Sales of the high-end chip have been a key sticking point between the two sides due to Washington's export controls. 

STOCK SURGE BOOSTS HUANG'S WEALTH

At current prices, CEO Huang's stake in Nvidia would be worth about $179.2 billion, according to regulatory filings and Reuters calculations. He is the world's eighth-richest person, per Forbes' billionaire list.

Born in Taiwan and raised in the United States from age nine, Huang has led Nvidia since founding it in 1993. Under his leadership, the company's H100 and Blackwell processors have become the engines behind large-language models powering tools such as ChatGPT and Elon Musk's xAI.

While Nvidia remains the clear front-runner in the AI race, Big Tech peers Apple and Microsoft have also reached $4 trillion in market value in recent months.

Analysts say the rally reflects investor confidence in unrelenting AI spending, though some warn valuations may be running hot. 

"AI's current expansion relies on a few dominant players financing each other's capacity. The moment investors start demanding cash-flow returns instead of capacity announcements, some of these flywheels could seize," said Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management.

Tech companies' heavy weighting in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 gives them broad influence over global markets.

Nvidia is due to report quarterly results on November 19. 

GEOPOLITICAL BARGAINING CHIP

The company's dominance has drawn global regulatory scrutiny, with U.S. export curbs on advanced chips making it a key pawn in Washington's strategy to limit China's access to AI technology.

"Nvidia clearly brought their story to D.C. to both educate and gain favor with the U.S. government," said Bob O'Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. "They managed to hit most of the hottest and most influential topics in tech."

The developer conference on Tuesday also served as a platform for Huang to walk a geopolitical tightrope. 

He praised Trump's "America First" policies for accelerating domestic tech investment, while warning that excluding China from Nvidia's ecosystem could limit U.S. access to half of the world's AI developers.

Rivals including Advanced Micro Devices and several well-funded startups are seeking to challenge Nvidia's dominance in high-end AI chips, but it remains the industry's top choice.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant, Rashika Singh and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa and Shashwat Chauhan, and by Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Sriraj Kalluvila)