Ann Wang/Reuters
Chipmaker Nvidia has become the biggest beneficiary of the AI boom that has swept Wall Street this year.
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Wall Street’s favorite artificial intelligence company, Nvidia, continues to grow to staggering heights.
The AI chipmaker’s market capitalization rose to $3.19 trillion on Wednesday, just ahead of Apple’s $2.99 trillion, making it the second-largest publicly traded U.S. company by that metric. The market capitalization is $3.15 trillion.
Nvidia is now the third company in the United States to cross the $3 trillion mark, after Apple and Microsoft.
Shares of the Santa Clara-based chipmaker rose 5.2% to about $1,224.4 per share, while Apple shares rose 0.8% to close at $196.
Those gains also helped lift the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq indexes on Wednesday, with both indexes closing at record highs.
NVIDIA (NVDA) has been the biggest beneficiary of the AI boom that has swept Wall Street this year, with its shares up 147% so far this year after soaring 239% in 2023.
Meanwhile, Apple shares have risen about 1.7% since the beginning of the year.
Earlier this week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company will release its most advanced AI chip platform, called Rubin, in 2026.
The Rubin platform is a successor to Blackwell, a supplier of chips for data centers. MarchAt the time, Nvidia called it “the world’s most powerful chip.”
Nvidia accounts for roughly 70% of AI semiconductor sales, leading some analysts to believe the company’s stock price could rise even further.
“Looking ahead, we believe NVDA is on pace to become the most valuable company given the numerous ways it can monetize AI and what we believe to be the largest market expansion opportunity across the entire technology sector,” Angelo Gino, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, wrote in a note Wednesday evening.
The company’s shares will soon become more affordable: Nvidia announced a 10-for-1 stock split last month, making the popular semiconductor company’s shares more affordable for retail investors. The split shares will start trading when the market opens on June 10.
This story has been updated with additional details and background information.
