Chip titan becomes first company worldwide to reach $5 trillion valuation

Nvidia has become the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market valuation, just three months after the Silicon Valley chipmaker broke through the $4 trillion mark.

The seemingly unstoppable demand for Nvidia’s chips has fuelled the company’s meteoric rise since early 2023. On October 29, Nvidia shares touched $207.86 in early morning trading, with 24.3 billion shares outstanding — giving it a market capitalisation of $5.05 trillion, according to an article by TechCrunch.

With this new valuation, Nvidia’s worth now surpasses the gross domestic product of India, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined.

Nvidia’s dominance stems from its early decision to adapt its graphics processing units (GPUs) — originally designed for powering video games — to train and run advanced artificial intelligence systems, including the technology behind ChatGPT and modern image generators. Demand for these GPUs has skyrocketed as AI chatbots have become mainstream and technology companies race to build and deploy them at scale.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has dismissed fears of an AI-driven market bubble, asserting that generative AI systems are far from a passing trend. He said the chatbots that once seemed merely “interesting” have evolved into powerful, profit-generating tools.

Huang is travelling to South Korea this week, where leaders from major Pacific Rim economies — including the United States, China, and Japan — are gathering for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The event, traditionally focused on free trade, is now dominated by tensions over sweeping US tariffs on technology and other goods. However, the most closely watched moment of the summit will likely occur on the sidelines, when Chinese and US leaders are expected to meet face-to-face on October 30.

Just a day before the summit, Huang revealed that Nvidia had received $500 billion worth of chip orders. The company also announced a partnership with Uber to develop robotaxi technology, alongside a $1 billion investment in Nokia to collaborate on next-generation 6G infrastructure.

In a separate initiative, Nvidia is partnering with the US Department of Energy to construct seven new AI supercomputers aimed at advancing research and national computing capabilities.

Last month, Nvidia disclosed plans to invest $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a partnership that will add at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia-powered AI data centres. The goal is to dramatically increase the computing capacity available to the creator of ChatGPT and further solidify Nvidia’s role at the centre of the AI revolution.

In August, Huang confirmed that Nvidia was in talks with the Trump administration about developing a new computer chip tailored for China. Trump later told reporters aboard Air Force One that he planned to discuss Nvidia’s chips directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping on October 30, during the APEC summit that Huang will also attend.

By Nazrin Sadigova