Nvidia became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company during the 2024 market-capitalization race.
Nvidia briefly took the global market-capitalization lead in June 2024, when demand for its artificial-intelligence chips drove a sharp rise in its share price. The company later traded places with Microsoft and Apple as markets moved.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. It became famous for graphics-processing units, or GPUs, used in video games, but GPUs also became highly important for training and running artificial-intelligence models.
The company’s valuation reflected expectations about data-center growth and AI infrastructure. Nvidia’s 2024 share split also made its quoted per-share price lower without changing the company’s total market value. Market-cap rankings are snapshots, so a company can lead for a short period without holding the position permanently.