Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable listed company on June 18, 2024.
Its market capitalization rose above those of Microsoft and Apple as investors responded to explosive demand for graphics processing units used in artificial intelligence. Nvidia’s share price and valuation were also affected by a ten-for-one stock split that took effect earlier that month.
Nvidia designs GPUs and related computing platforms. Although its products were first strongly associated with computer graphics and gaming, data-center AI applications became a central source of investor interest.
The ranking changed repeatedly as the share prices of the three companies moved. A company’s position in a market-cap ranking is therefore time-specific, unlike a permanent title such as a founding date.