Nvidia hits $2 trillion valuation as AI frenzy grips Wall Street

By Aditya Soni

(Reuters) – Nvidia (NASDAQ:) hit $2 trillion in market value on Friday, riding on an insatiable demand for its chips that made the Silicon Valley firm the pioneer of the generative artificial intelligence boom.

The milestone followed another bumper revenue forecast from the chip designer that drove up its market value by $277 billion on Thursday – Wall Street’s largest one-day gain on record.

Its rapid ascent in the past year has led analysts to draw parallels to the picks and shovels providers during the gold rush of 1800s as Nvidia’s chips are used by almost all generative AI players from chatGPT-maker OpenAI to Google (NASDAQ:).

That has helped the company vault from $1 trillion to $2 trillion market value in just around nine months – the fastest among U.S. companies and in less than half the time it took tech giants Apple (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:).

“For AI companies today – the leaders of the sector – what’s going to be binding for them is not going to be demand. It’s just going to be their capacity to answer the surging demand,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.