How AI Chip Giant Nvidia Became the World's First $4 Trillion Company

The company has seen its fortunes surge over the past three years thanks to the rise of generative artificial intelligence

- Robbie Whelan, Asa Fitch & Muhammad Shumail

Nvidia became the first company in history to reach a market value of $4 trillion, beating rivals Apple and Microsoft to the milestone in Wednesday morning trading on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange.

The AI chip giant has seen its fortunes surge over the past three years thanks to the rise of generative artificial intelligence, an emerging technology that promises to revolutionize business and remake how humans interact with technology across the globe.

The company had a valuation of $3.708 trillion last week.

Founded by Taiwanese-American engineer Jensen Huang in 1993, Nvidia initially had a much more niche purpose: making personal-computer game graphics better. Its ascendance from a graphics-chip designer catering mainly to video gamers into the digital arms dealer at the red-hot center of the AI boom has been meteoric.

Earlier this year, Nvidia faced one of its biggest challenges ever when DeepSeek, a lower-priced Chinese chatbot, launched after being developed much more quickly and cheaply than most large language models.

DeepSeek, which was developed using about 2,000 Nvidia H800 processors—significantly fewer than most competitors use—proved that developers could create powerful AI software more cheaply and without using as much computing power as previously believed necessary. Nvidia's stock tumbled nearly 20% on that news but has more than recovered on the promise of higher spending by the company's biggest customers.