World's Largest Company? Not Apple Or Microsoft, But AI Giant Who Was At $4 5-Years Ago Is Now Most Valued

The title of the world's largest company no longer belongs to either Warren Buffett's favourite Apple Inc. or Bill Gates-led Microsoft. Both IT behemoths have been toppled by the world's largest artificial intelligence company, Nvidia which has been rocking the US market in 2024 tremendously. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Nvidia has been breaking all boundaries with its stock price rising nearly 181.5% in 2024 so far.

Overnight, Nvidia's stock that is listed on Nasdaq stood at $135.58, up by 3.51%. In a single day, Nvidia gained up to 113.09 billion dollars in market value. By the end of June 18, its market cap reached $3.335 trillion, making it the largest company in the world.

Meanwhile, as of June 18, Microsoft's market cap is at $3.317 trillion, and that of Apple is at $3.285 trillion. The gap between Nvidia and Microsoft is of $0.018 trillion, and with Apple, the gap is $0.05 trillion.

It's an open field, and the trio of Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple will be competing to hold the most-valued company title.

Also, Nvidia's 1 day gain of $113.09 billion is even higher by the overall market value of companies like Boston Scientific which has an m-cap of $112.18 billion, Lockheed Martin with an m-cap of $110.37 billion, Allianz with $108.04 billion m-cap, Boeing with m-cap $107.42 billion, ABB with m-cap of $106.89 billion, Dell with m-cap of $105.79 billion, and even Indian-based telecom giant Bharti Airtel whose m-cap is at $101.39 billion.

5 years ago, Nvidia was not even top 20. And now, it's the most valuable company in the world. Nvidia's performance has been overwhelmingly accelerating since 2023.

Despite a stock split recently, Nvidia stock zoomed by 43%, while year-to-date, the stock rallied by 181.5%. In a year, Nvidia has skyrocketed by a massive 209.5%. In 5 years, the gains by Nvidia are breathtaking by 3,477.31%. 5 years ago, Nvidia was just a stock which was worth 4 dollars.

From June 2019 to December 2023, Nvidia shares traded between $4 to $15. It was in 2023 when it started to see an extraordinary surge. Not just that Nvidia's all-time gains are mind-boggling by 338,850%. The stock was merely 0.040 dollars 25 years ago, on January 22, 1999.

Two years ago, Nvidia held a market value of $400 billion. It took Nvidia a year to hit the $1 trillion mark in May 2023, but since then the stock has been flying high. From May 2023 to date, Nvidia's market value soared by over $2.3 trillion. In less than 5 months, Nvidia gained over $1 trillion to hit the $3 trillion mark in June 2024 earlier compared to when it touched the $2 trillion level in February 2024.

The reason why Nvidia shares are on a bull run is because of surging demand for its artificial intelligence chips. As per Wall Street Journal, Nvidia's chips have been the workhorses of the AI boom, essential tools in the creation of sophisticated AI systems that have captured the public's imagination with their ability to produce cogent text, images and audio with minimal prompting.

Could Nvidia hit $5 trillion soon? Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann raised its target price on Nvidia to $200 from earlier $140. He believes that Nvidia will extend its rally, taking its market value to $5 trillion in the coming year. As per Fortune's report, Mosesmann, who kept a buy rating on Nvidia shares since starting coverage in 2017, said he was positive about Nvidia's hardware offerings, but noted that "the real narrative lies in the software that complements all the hardware goodness."

In the first quarter ended April 28, 2024, Nvidia reported revenue of $26.0 billion, up 18% from the previous quarter and up 262% from a year ago.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA in May 2024, "The next industrial revolution has begun - companies and countries are partnering with NVIDIA to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centres to accelerated computing and build a new type of data centre - AI factories - to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence."

Huang added, "AI will bring significant productivity gains to nearly every industry and help companies be more cost- and energy-efficient while expanding revenue opportunities."

The CEO revealed that Nvidia is poised for the next wave of growth. He said, "The Blackwell platform is in full production and forms the foundation for trillion-parameter-scale generative AI. Spectrum-X opens a brand-new market for us to bring large-scale AI to Ethernet-only data centres. And NVIDIA NIM is our new software offering that delivers enterprise-grade, optimized generative AI to run on CUDA everywhere - from the cloud to on-prem data centres and RTX AI PCs - through our expansive network of ecosystem partners."

Nvidia in June turned ex-split for the ratio of 10:1. This meant a ten-for-one forward stock split of NVIDIA's issued common stock to make stock ownership more accessible to employees and investors.