NVIDIA’s 2024 stock-market rise made it the world’s most valuable company for the first time.
NVIDIA briefly became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in June 2024, overtaking Microsoft and Apple as its share price climbed. The rise followed strong financial results and immense demand for its data-center GPUs, which are widely used in generative-artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
NVIDIA’s business had changed substantially from its early identity as a supplier of gaming graphics cards. Its CUDA software platform, networking products, and specialized data-center chips helped create an ecosystem that made its hardware valuable for AI developers and cloud providers.
The ranking was not permanent. Market leadership depends on daily prices, and other companies later regained the top position. NVIDIA’s episode nevertheless illustrated how quickly a company can move up the global rankings when investors revise expectations for an expanding technology market.