NVIDIA’s 2024 stock-market rise was strongly linked to demand for its AI-focused GPUs.
NVIDIA designs graphics processing units, or GPUs, that can perform the highly parallel calculations used in artificial-intelligence training and inference. In 2024, rapidly growing demand for generative-AI systems increased investor expectations for sales of NVIDIA’s data-center products, contributing to a dramatic rise in its market capitalization.
The company’s CUDA software platform also helped make its hardware attractive to developers and researchers. NVIDIA does not manufacture most of its chips in its own fabrication plants; it relies on manufacturing partners such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
NVIDIA’s gaming graphics business remains important, but data-center computing became the central growth story behind its market-value surge. Market capitalization can rise quickly when investors price in future earnings, so a soaring valuation does not mean the company has already collected that amount in revenue or cash.