Nvidia overtakes Apple: world's first by market capitalisation

Nvidia became the world's largest company on Tuesday, surpassing Apple on Wall Street by market capitalisation. Driven by the fever towards investments in artificial intelligence. Shares of Nvidia by the end of the Tuesday 5 November session were up 2.9 per cent, to $139.93. Its stock market value rose to $3.430 billion, ahead of Apple, which remained at $3.380 billion. Microsoft, overtaken by Nvidia last month, has a market capitalisation of $3.006 billion. Since the end of 2022, the value of the Santa Clara company on Wall Street, which has the lead in AI applications, has risen by more than 850 per cent.

"Over the past few quarters, it seemed like people were basically concerned about inflation numbers, employment numbers and Nvidia's numbers," said Fall Ainina, research director at James Investment Research. "Nvidia's overtaking of Apple in terms of market capitalisation not only shows that it is the biggest beneficiary of the positive cycle on artificial intelligence, but also suggests that people expect the artificial intelligence boom to continue." The chipmaker accounts for 7 per cent of the S&P 500 index's weight and is responsible for about a quarter of the benchmark's 21 per cent gain this year. Nvidia had previously closed trading as the largest-capitalised company on the stock market in June, although it only held the record for one day. The Wall Street-listed tech biggies are all heavily exposed to artificial intelligence: Apple with its newly launched AI iPhones; Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. with their cloud businesses and AI services; and Meta Platforms Inc.'s AI capabilities and ad targeting. With the exception of Apple, these companies are all among Nvidia's largest customers and emphasised their commitment to continue spending on artificial intelligence.