Nvidia hits $5 trillion valuation as it consolidates power in global AI boom

As Jensen Huang, the CEO of chip-making giant Nvidia, travelled to Asia to meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, his company’s value topped $5 trillion. It was a show of wealth that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

But that was before the ChatGPT chatbot ignited an artificial intelligence boom that is remaking the global economy. And it was before Nvidia’s computer chips, the most essential and expensive component in almost every AI scheme, became a linchpin of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Nvidia’s milestone, the first publicly traded company to top $5 trillion ($A7.6 trillion) in market value, is indicative not only of the astonishing levels of wealth consolidating among a handful of Silicon Valley companies but also the strategic importance of this company, which added $1 trillion in market value in just the past four months.

Nvidia has become a driving force behind the US economy. Spending on data centres, which are filled with the company’s chips, accounted for 92 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product growth in the first half of the year, according to Jason Furman, a professor of economic policy at Harvard.

Without it, the economy would have grown 0.1 per cent.

But Nvidia’s stunning growth also comes with a warning to investors that the stock market is becoming more dependent on a group of technology companies that are splurging to develop an unproven technology.

“There’s unbridled optimism about where this technology is going to go,” said Gene Munster, a managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, which invests in emerging technology companies.

“But the question is: Will it deliver? The usefulness of AI is still limited today.”

Nvidia’s AI chips, which account for more than 90 per cent of the market, are highly coveted by businesses and governments around the world.

Mr Trump has put them at the forefront of America’s trade strategy, striking deals to sell AI chips to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan.

As the president travelled across Asia this week, he signalled that Nvidia would be a factor in US-China trade talks. Sales of its chips to China were suspended over the summer as tensions flared between those countries.

The prospects of Nvidia’s return to China helped send its share price up almost 3 per cent on Wednesday and pushed its market value above $5 trillion, with its stock ending the trading day at about $207 a share.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company