Nvidia became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company after the AI-chip boom in June 2024.
Nvidia briefly took the top market-capitalization position on June 18, 2024, when its valuation rose above Microsoft and Apple. Investors were responding to extraordinary demand for Nvidia’s graphics-processing units and related systems used to train and run artificial-intelligence models.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. The company originally became known for graphics hardware used in video games, but its CUDA software platform and parallel-processing technology helped make its products important in data centers and machine learning.
Nvidia’s leadership in market value was not permanent: public-company rankings change with share prices. The company is also a chip designer rather than a conventional semiconductor manufacturer owning the full production chain. Many Nvidia products are manufactured by outside foundries, including TSMC.