Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company in June 2024.
Its market capitalization overtook Microsoft and Apple as investors continued to price in explosive demand for graphics processors used in artificial-intelligence systems. Nvidia’s chips, networking products, and software ecosystem became central to the construction of large-scale AI data centers.
The ranking was temporary because market capitalization changes whenever share prices move. Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia repeatedly exchanged the top position as investors reassessed growth, profits, interest rates, and demand for AI infrastructure.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 and became famous for graphics-processing units used in video games. Those same parallel-computing capabilities later made its hardware valuable for machine learning, creating a major shift in the company’s market identity.