Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization after its shares surged on artificial-intelligence demand in 2024.
Nvidia briefly overtook Microsoft and Apple in June 2024, with investors valuing the company at more than $3 trillion. Its graphics-processing units, or GPUs, became central to training and running many artificial-intelligence systems.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. It originally focused on graphics hardware for computer games, but its CUDA software platform helped make its chips useful for general-purpose parallel computing.
Market-capitalization rankings can change daily because share prices move. Nvidia’s position therefore describes a point in time rather than a permanent title. The company’s stock split ten-for-one in June 2024, changing the per-share price but not, by itself, the company’s total market value.