Nvidia became the first semiconductor maker to lead the global market-cap rankings in 2024.
Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in June 2024, overtaking Microsoft and Apple as its share price surged. The rise reflected demand for its graphics-processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run artificial-intelligence systems.
Nvidia began as a graphics-chip company serving computer games and professional visualization. Its CUDA software platform helped developers use Nvidia GPUs for general-purpose parallel computing, creating an important foundation for modern AI workloads.
The ranking was not permanent: market capitalization changes with share prices, and other companies later reclaimed the top position. Nvidia’s 2024 ascent nevertheless marked a major shift in investor attention from traditional consumer technology toward companies supplying AI infrastructure.