Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable public company in June 2024 after its share price surged.
Nvidia reached the top market-cap position on June 18, 2024, overtaking Microsoft and Apple for a period during trading. The shift followed a dramatic rise in demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which are widely used to train and run artificial-intelligence systems.
Nvidia began as a company focused on graphics chips for computer games. Its CUDA software platform and high-performance data-center hardware later made it a central supplier for modern AI computing. Investors increasingly valued the company on expectations of rapid growth in that market.
The ranking was temporary because public-company valuations change whenever share prices move. Nvidia’s place at the top did not mean it had the highest revenue or the most employees; it meant its total equity value was briefly the largest among listed companies.