Nvidia has left behind everyone to become the world’s most valuable company in terms of market cap. Its rise is possibly unheard before and unprecedented.
Nvidia is a name which most people in the PC world will know as a consumer graphics card maker. Sure enough, a company founded about 31 years ago, was mostly and is still mostly known for making GPUs to be used in the Nvidia branded graphics cards.
But despite having a huge market share in graphics cards worldwide, Nvidia never really made is so big that it could become among the top richest companies in the world. Until recently, that is.
Two years ago, Nvidia officially decided to enter the AI race, with its announcement of Hopper series of datacenter GPUs, with Nvidia H100 being the most famous of them. These GPUs offered far better AI performance than its own previous products and also products from its rivals.
Since then, Nvidia has announced many upgrades and updates to its originally announced AI graphics cards. Nvidia GH100 and Nvidia GB100 being some of them.
These AI GPUs, as one might call them, are selling like crazy worldwide. They are so overbooked that companies are expected to wait for years to come before they can get their hands on them.
So much is the demand that TSMC – which produces Nvidia GPUs, is busy setting more manufacturing units in multiple places all around Taiwan to keep up with the unprecedented demand. As the current manufacturing capacity is just not enough.
This unprecedented sales of Nvidia AI graphics cards has ensured that Nvidia has become the top company worldwide in terms of market cap.
Nvidia Becomes Richest Company In Terms Of Market Cap
As per CompaniesMarketCap, Nvidia has now become the world’s most valuable company in terms of market cap (thanks to @ghost_motley for the tip).
At the time of writing this article, Nvidia’s market cap stands at $3.343 trillion, which is slightly above the $3.314 trillion market cap of Microsoft, which was first on the list before Nvidia overtook it.
By doing this, Nvidia has left many other big brands like Google, Amazon and others behind in terms of market cap.
Just to explain how big its rise is. Four years ago, Nvidia’s market cap was $323.24 billion. Since then, Nvidia has grown 10x times to become $3.343 trillion in just four years. This growth is possibly unheard before and unprecedented.
What’s interesting is that while its rise is quick, it hasn’t happened overnight. Just 15 days ago, Bloomberg reported how Nvidia had crossed $3T in market cap.
Not to forget, it was overtaking other companies one after another recently in an apparent manner.
Another thing worth mentioning is that quarter after quarter, Nvidia is announcing record profits in recent times. So it’s not only its shares alone which are rising. Its overall profits are rising too thanks to high margins of these AI graphics cards.
Conclusion
Nvidia is all craze worldwide thanks to the AI boom. Its founder and chief Jensen Huang is followed everywhere and anywhere he goes, almost like a superhero. He gets more attention and fills up stadiums faster than many of the big superstars in the music industry.
But some commentators suggest that such a quick rise in its shares is a bubble which isn’t going to stay long. There are some who also say that even AI boom is a bubble, which may not be true, but that’s an entirely different story.
The unfortunate victims in this are the common graphics cards consumers though. In recent times, Nvidia seems to have diverted all its resources towards its money making datacenter GPUs. Leaving consumer graphics cards behind.
The outcome of this is that the consumer RTX graphics cards have become very expensive and come with cut-down VRAM and memory bus. Not to forget, cut-down versions of GPUs are being used by them in their graphics card models, making people buy expensive graphics while giving them a cheaper GPU inside them. This is especially the case when compared to earlier series of graphics cards from Nvidia.
Additionally, how big of an improvement will the future consumer RTX 5000 graphics cards offer and how much will they cost, it’s to be seen. Provided that Nvidia has any manufacturing space left to make the GPU for them.
Either way, this news of Nvidia becoming the most valuable company should make Nvidia, its shareholders and Jensen happy. They have all the reasons to be happy. After all, they have become the most valuable company in the whole world.
