By Adedapo Adesanya
Nvidia has just become a $1 trillion company, making it the first chipmaker to join the exclusive trillion-dollar club in the United States stock market.
With this, the chipmaker has earned a seat at the table with other members of the club, which include Apple, Microsoft, Google’s Alphabet, and Amazon.
The rise in valuation was fueled by tech companies, big and small, racing to add generative artificial intelligence tools to their products.
AI tools made up the vast bulk of recent Google I/O and Microsoft Build presentations, and Nvidia’s chips make it a key supplier for companies trying to build something with AI.
Over the weekend, Nvidia’s Computex 2023 keynote was full of AI announcements, including a demo of games using natural language both for input and for character responses instead of scripts and a new supercomputer built around its latest GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip capable of an exaflop of GPU performance.
Its valuation pushed over the trillion-dollar benchmark as trading opened today at over $400 per share.
According to Reuters, Nvidia’s shares rose about 25 per cent last week, sparking a rally in AI-related stocks and boosting other chipmakers, helping the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index close on Friday at its highest in over a year.
Significantly, Nvidia forecast $11 billion in sales for the fiscal second quarter of 2024 alone. Expected sales were 50 per cent higher than consensus estimates of $7.15 billion.
OpenAI-owned ChatGPT’s rapid success has prompted tech giants such as Alphabet and Microsoft to make the most of generative AI, which can engage in human-like conversation and craft everything from jokes to poetry.
Aduragbemi Omiyale