How NVIDIA Overtook Apple As The Most Valuable Company In The World
A few years ago, when you thought of NVIDIA, powerful GeForce RTX graphics cards were the first thing that popped into your mind. In 2024, that has drastically changed for some, with NVIDIA overtaking industry behemoths such as Apple for the title of world's most valuable company. While GPUs are still the core business for NVIDIA, its bread and butter demographic has changed significantly over the years, from gamers to data center clients. With a market cap of $3.43 trillion, the company's rise to dominance has been extraordinary and rapid.
The explosion of deployment of AI infrastructure by companies such as Microsoft, Google, Oracle and Amazon have sparked a new gold rush age. OpenAI's ChatGPT is the best known example, being an impressive large language model that's gone mainstream.
The pace of investment in this market is staggering, along with the deployment speed, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang remarked about Elon Musk's Grok X.ai service. NVIDIA has enjoyed a monstrous boost to its stock price, further fueling its reserves to keep the momentum going forward. Criticism of the actual usefulness and monetization of AI has risen, however. The current phase is heavy on investment, but companies buying these GPUs have not fully figured out how monetization of the technology will be fully implemented.
The explosion of deployment of AI infrastructure by companies such as Microsoft, Google, Oracle and Amazon have sparked a new gold rush age. OpenAI's ChatGPT is the best known example, being an impressive large language model that's gone mainstream.
The pace of investment in this market is staggering, along with the deployment speed, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang remarked about Elon Musk's Grok X.ai service. NVIDIA has enjoyed a monstrous boost to its stock price, further fueling its reserves to keep the momentum going forward. Criticism of the actual usefulness and monetization of AI has risen, however. The current phase is heavy on investment, but companies buying these GPUs have not fully figured out how monetization of the technology will be fully implemented.
The common denominator between Apple and NVIDIA is that both companies make products that people want en masse. While Apple is much more consumer focused, NVIDIA has grown with its data center business to much larger companies and with higher profit margins. There are also more linked correlations between the companies that have a strong synergy.
While Apple has long avoided NVIDIA GPUs in its previous Macs, in favor of AMD products, Apple has embraced OpenAI's ChatGPT to be integrated in its devices. Along with Apple Intelligence, this is its approach to an off-device AI that is already far ahead of anything it can do internally. The link here comes with OpenAI, which is heavily powered by NVIDIA's data center GPUs.
So both go hand in hand, as the rising tide raises all ships, regardless of competitive postmarks historically in place. Apple Intelligence has so far failed to wow its massive audience, with a slow rollout and run-of-the-mill features mostly focused around writing and text assistance.
That is the storyline of AI so far; a large investment initially being required before any significant payoff can be felt on the part of end users. This is exactly how NVIDIA shines, however, as it is selling the shovels for the proverbial gold miners and profiting along the way.
NVIDIA has not forgotten its core roots with gaming, however. At CES 2025, CEO Jensen Huang will be the keynote speaker and is expected to announce the new GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs. Its dominance in the gaming sector is but a slice of its total business, but still an important one. The data center market continues to be the primary reason, however, as to why NVIDIA is the world's most valuable company currently.
While Apple has long avoided NVIDIA GPUs in its previous Macs, in favor of AMD products, Apple has embraced OpenAI's ChatGPT to be integrated in its devices. Along with Apple Intelligence, this is its approach to an off-device AI that is already far ahead of anything it can do internally. The link here comes with OpenAI, which is heavily powered by NVIDIA's data center GPUs.
So both go hand in hand, as the rising tide raises all ships, regardless of competitive postmarks historically in place. Apple Intelligence has so far failed to wow its massive audience, with a slow rollout and run-of-the-mill features mostly focused around writing and text assistance.
That is the storyline of AI so far; a large investment initially being required before any significant payoff can be felt on the part of end users. This is exactly how NVIDIA shines, however, as it is selling the shovels for the proverbial gold miners and profiting along the way.
NVIDIA has not forgotten its core roots with gaming, however. At CES 2025, CEO Jensen Huang will be the keynote speaker and is expected to announce the new GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs. Its dominance in the gaming sector is but a slice of its total business, but still an important one. The data center market continues to be the primary reason, however, as to why NVIDIA is the world's most valuable company currently.
