THE CHIPS ARE UP

AI Giant Becomes World’s Richest Company With $4TN Valuation

The company eclipsed fellow tech giants Apple, Microsoft and Google to become the world’s richest company.

California-based chipmaker Nvidia has officially become the most valuable company in the world, beating Silicon Valley rivals Microsoft, Apple, and Google to become the first company valued at over $4 trillion. The tech giant is the first company to ever achieve this market value, beating Apple’s previous record-setting market cap in December, reported the Associated Press. Founded in 1993, Nvidia achieved a $2 trillion valuation in just over a decade before hitting $3 trillion in June 2024. Its 1999 invention of the graphics processing unit (GPU) revolutionized PC gaming and modern computing. Its valuation has skyrocketed in recent years however after it cemented itself as the decisive market leader in creating the chips which artificial intelligence (AI) and other large language models such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini depend on. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has hailed AI as “the next industrial revolution.” Tech giants have since begun aggressively stockpiling Nvidia’s chips in order to advance self-driving cars, AI-generated content, and more. Nvidia’s shares rose by 2.5 percent Wednesday morning, trading at $164 each. Just two years ago, they were valued at $14. Last quarter saw the company’s revenue surge by 69 percent to $44.1 billion.