Nvidia became the first company to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization based largely on artificial-intelligence demand in 2024.
Nvidia crossed $3 trillion in June 2024 after its shares surged as businesses and cloud providers invested heavily in generative artificial-intelligence infrastructure. The company’s graphics-processing units, or GPUs, became central to training and running large AI models.
Nvidia’s rise followed decades of work in parallel computing. It was founded in 1993 and initially became known for graphics chips used in personal computers and games. Its CUDA software platform later helped developers use Nvidia hardware for broader scientific and machine-learning workloads.
The company’s market-cap ranking changed quickly because its stock price rose rapidly and it completed a ten-for-one stock split in June 2024. A split changes the number of shares and the per-share price but does not, by itself, change total market capitalization. Microsoft and Apple were among the other companies near the top of the rankings.