Nvidia became the world's most valuable publicly traded company after its AI-driven rise in 2024.
Nvidia briefly held the top market-cap position in June 2024 after its share price surged on demand for its data-center accelerators. These processors are central to training and running many large artificial-intelligence systems.
The company had spent decades developing graphics-processing technology and software, giving it an important head start when AI workloads expanded. Its H100 and related data-center products became especially prominent among major cloud and technology customers.
Market-cap rankings can change daily because they depend on share prices. Nvidia's period at the top therefore did not mean it was permanently the largest company; Apple and Microsoft alternated with it as market conditions changed.