Nvidia became the first chip designer to join the $3 trillion market-cap club in June 2024. Its valuation surged as investors anticipated massive demand for graphics processors used in artificial-intelligence computing.
Nvidia originally became famous for graphics processing units used in video games. Those same parallel-processing capabilities became highly valuable for training and running modern AI models. Its CUDA software platform also helped create a large developer ecosystem around Nvidia hardware.
Nvidia’s rise is often confused with the market positions of Intel, AMD, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Those businesses are important semiconductor companies, but Nvidia’s rapid valuation growth was especially connected to data-center AI accelerators.