Nvidia's market valuation is now worth more than the GDP of all the nations of the world except the US, China, Germany, Japan, India and the UK.  Nvidia’s has overtaken Apple, Microsoft, and Saudi Aramco based on their market capitalization.

Nvidia’s meteoric rise can be attributed primarily to its groundbreaking advancements in graphics processing units (GPUs) which were Initially renowned for their use in the the gaming industry but now Nvidia’s GPUs have now become indispensable in various high-growth sectors, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) the technology on which OpenAI’s ChatGPT are based can create text, images, and other media.

It was Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang and others in Santa Clara, California, Nvidia launched its first graphics processor, the NV1, in 1995.

From 1999 to 2005, Nvidia dominated the gaming graphics market with its GeForce series, including the GeForce 256, the first GPU with an integrated transform and lighting (T&L) engine. Between 2006 and 2012, Nvidia diversified its offerings, launching the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) for GPU-based parallel computing and the Tesla GPU for high-performance computing. A significant breakthrough came in 2009 with the release of the first Tegra processor, marking Nvidia’s entry into the mobile market.

From 2013 to 2018, Nvidia shifted focus towards AI and data centres, introducing the Nvidia GRID for GPU virtualization and the Nvidia Drive platform for autonomous vehicles, in partnership with Tesla.

Since 2019, Nvidia has aggressively pursued AI and the metaverse while expanding its data centres. The introduction of the Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPU and surpassing a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2023 solidified its industry leadership. 

Strategic Acquisitions and Partnerships

Strategic acquisitions have played a crucial role in Nvidia’s ascent. The acquisition of Arm Holdings in 2022 for $40 billion was a game-changer. Arm’s extensive portfolio of chip designs, widely used in mobile devices and increasingly in IoT and edge computing, provided Nvidia with a massive competitive edge.

Moreover, partnerships with leading companies across various industries have bolstered Nvidia’s market position. Collaborations with tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have ensured that Nvidia’s technology remains at the cutting edge of innovation.

Nvidia’s stock has skyrocketed, delivering a return of over 400 per cent to shareholders over the past three years. The company’s shares have risen more than 170 per cent this year and about 1,100 per cent since their October 2022 low. Nvidia’s market value took only 96 days to rise from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. In comparison, Microsoft took 945 days and Apple took 1,044 days to make the same leap.