Nvidia tops Microsoft, regains most valuable company title for first time since January

Nvidia passed Microsoft in market cap on Tuesday, once again becoming the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.

Shares of the artificial intelligence chipmaker rose about 3 per cent on Tuesday to $US141.40 (AUD $218.80), and the stock has surged nearly 24 per cent over the past month as Nvidia’s growth has persisted even through export control and tariff concerns.

The company now has a $3.45 trillion market cap. Microsoft closed Tuesday with a $3.44 trillion market cap.

Nvidia has been trading places with Apple and Microsoft at the top of the market cap ranks since last June. The last time Nvidia was the most valuable company was on January 24.

Nvidia and other chip names boosted markets Tuesday. Broadcom rose per cent, and Micron Technology gained 4 per cent. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF, which tracks a basket of chip stocks, gained 2 per cent.

Last week, Nvidia reported 96 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $44.06 billion in sales in its fiscal first quarter. That represented 69 per cent growth from the year-ago period, an incredible growth rate for a company as large as Nvidia.

Nvidia’s growth has been fuelled by its AI chips, which are used by companies including OpenAI to develop software such as ChatGPT.

Companies including Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, Oracle and xAI have been purchasing Nvidia’s AI accelerators in massive quantities to build ever-larger clusters of computers for advanced AI work.

Nvidia was founded in 1993 to produce chips for playing 3D games, but in recent years, it has taken off as scientists and researchers found that the same Nvidia chip designs that could render computer graphics were ideal for the kind of parallel processing needed for AI.