Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization in June 2024 during the artificial-intelligence boom.
Nvidia’s rise was driven by demand for graphics processing units used in AI training and inference. Cloud providers and technology companies purchased large quantities of its accelerators to build data centers capable of handling advanced machine-learning workloads.
The company’s market value was also affected by a ten-for-one stock split in June 2024. A stock split lowers the price per share while increasing the number of shares, so it does not by itself change total market capitalization. Nvidia’s underlying share-price gains were the important factor.
Nvidia later competed for the top ranking with Microsoft and Apple. Such rankings are temporary snapshots because market capitalization changes whenever investors buy or sell shares.