San Francisco: Nvidia dethroned Apple as the world's most valuable company on Friday, following a record-setting rally in the stock powered by an insatiable demand for its new supercomputing AI chips.
Nvidia's stock market value briefly touched $3.53 trillion, while that of Apple was $3.52 trillion, according to data from LSEG.
In June, Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable company, before it was overtaken by Microsoft and Apple. The tech trio's market capitalisations have been neck-and-neck for several months. Microsoft's market value stood at $3.20 trillion.
Nvidia's stock has risen about 18 per cent so far in October, with a string of gains coming after OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a funding round of $6.6 billion. Nvidia provides chips used to train so-called foundation models such as OpenAI's GPT-4.
"More companies are now embracing artificial intelligence in their everyday tasks and demand remains strong for Nvidia chips," said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
"It is certainly in a sweet spot and so long as we avoid a big economic downturn in the United States, there is a feeling that companies will continue to invest heavily in AI capabilities, creating a healthy tailwind for Nvidia." Nvidia's shares hit a record high on Tuesday, building on a rally from last week when TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted a forecast-beating 54% jump in quarterly profit driven by soaring demand for chips used in AI.
The next big test will be when Nvidia reports third-quarter results in November. Nvidia in August forecast third-quarter revenue of $32.5 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared with the current average analyst expectation of $32.90 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said in a note dated on October 10 that he remains "very bullish" about the company longer term, but the recent rally "raises the bar for earnings somewhat".
After a meeting with Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, Moore noted the ramp up in production of its next-generation Blackwell chips appeared to be "quite strong" and are booked out for 12 months. The stock came under pressure in August after Nvidia confirmed reports that the production of Blackwell chips was delayed until the fourth quarter.
Shares of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft have an outsized influence on the richly valued technology sector as well as the broader US stock market, with the trio accounting for about a fifth of the S&P 500 index's weightage.
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