Nvidia Was Once 30 Days Away From Going Out of Business. Here's Why It Just Overtook Apple to Become the World's Biggest Company. This is the second time that Nvidia has pushed ahead to the top spot this year.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Nvidia is now the biggest company in the world by market cap.
- The reason for its prominence is that AI has taken front and center focus on Wall Street and investors expect the AI boom to continue, per Bloomberg.
- Nvidia has grown since its early days, including one point when it was on the brink of going out of business.
Nvidia passed Apple on Tuesday to claim the top spot as the biggest company in the world with a market cap of $3.43 trillion to Apple's $3.38 trillion.
At the time of writing, Nvidia had a market cap of $3.584 trillion, higher than Apple's $3.389 trillion and Microsoft's $3.102 trillion. Apple and Microsoft are currently in second and third place.
According to Bloomberg, Nvidia's market cap rising above Apple's shows that AI has become "dominant" on Wall Street. The move also shows that investors expect the AI boom to continue. Nvidia counts the biggest tech companies as its clients, including Meta, Microsoft, and Google.
It's the second time this year that Nvidia has become the world's most valuable company. The first was on June 18 when Nvidia's market cap hit $3.34 trillion — though within a week, the AI chipmaker was down to third place, behind Microsoft and Apple.
Why Did Nvidia Almost Go Out of Business?
The milestone of this market cap peak represents the long way that Nvidia has come from its early days.
Nvidia was founded in 1993, and, by 1996 was on the brink of going out of business. The company's CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang said there was a 50-50 chance the business would survive the period and let go of half its staff.
The turning point, and the moment of Nvidia's continued survival, was the Riva 128 graphics chip the company released in April 1997. The chip put Nvidia "back on the map," generating revenue for the company that they put back into R&D, which helped "establish Nvidia as a leader in computer graphics," according to the IEEE Computer Society.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by MADS CLAUS RASMUSSEN/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
Though Nvidia endured after all, Huang never forgot the tumultuous period—and he never let his employees forget it, either.
He has started many presentations with the words, "Our company is thirty days from going out of business."
Nvidia shares have grown over 200% year-to-date and over 2,700% in the past five years.
Related: 'Everybody Wants to Be First': Nvidia CEO Says Demand for Its Blackwell AI Chip Is 'Insane'
