AI chipmaker Nvidia is the first $5 trillion company
[October 30, 2025] By
MICHELLE CHAPMAN
Nvidia has become the first $5 trillion company, just three months after
the Silicon Valley chipmaker was first to break through the $4 trillion
barrier.
Hitting the new benchmark puts more emphasis on the upheaval being
unleashed by an artificial intelligence craze that’s widely viewed as
the biggest tectonic shift in technology since Apple co—founder Steve
Jobs unveiled the first iPhone 18 years ago. Apple rode the iPhone’s
success to become the first publicly traded company to be valued at $1
trillion, $2 trillion and eventually, $3 trillion.
But there are concerns of a possible AI bubble, with officials at the
Bank of England earlier this month flagging the growing risk that tech
stock prices pumped up by the AI boom could burst. The head of the
International Monetary Fund has raised a similar alarm.
The ravenous appetite for Nvidia’s chips is the main reason that the
company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023. On
Wednesday the shares closed at $207.04 with 24.3 billion shares
outstanding, putting its market cap at $5.03 trillion.
In comparison, Nvidia's value is greater than the GDP of India, Japan
and the United Kingdom, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Nvidia carved out an early lead in tailoring its chipsets known as
graphics processing units, or GPUs, from use in powering video games to
helping to train powerful AI systems, like the technology behind ChatGPT
and image generators. Demand skyrocketed as more people began using AI
chatbots. Tech companies scrambled for more chips to build and run them.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has downplayed concerns of a bubble bursting,
saying that the generative AI chatbots that were merely “interesting”
when they first took hold a few years ago are now becoming so useful
that they will be profitable.
Huang was heading to South Korea this week as leaders from major Pacific
Rim economies, including the United States, China and Japan, are
gathering for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that
has long championed free trade but is now confronting sweeping U.S.
tariffs on technology and other products.
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 The multilateral gathering in
Gyeongju is expected to be overshadowed by a sideline event — a
face-to-face meeting on Thursday between Trump and Chinese leader Xi
Jinping — as their intensifying trade war leaves the South Korean
hosts in a difficult balancing act.
On Tuesday, Huang disclosed $500 billion in chip orders. The company
also announced a partnership with Uber on robotaxis and a $1 billion
investment in Nokia, with the two planning to work together on 6G
technology.
In addition, Nvidia is teaming with the Department of Energy to
build seven new AI supercomputers.
Last month Nvidia announced that it will invest $100 billion in
OpenAI as part of a partnership that will add at least 10 gigawatts
of Nvidia AI data centers to ramp up the computing power for the
owner of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.
In August, Huang said that Nvidia was discussing a potential new
computer chip designed for China with the Trump administration.
Trump said on Air Force One that he will speak with Xi about
Nvidia's chips on Thursday on the sidelines of the APEC event that
Huang is also attending.
In August, Trump announced a deal with chipmakers Nvidia and AMD to
lift export controls on sales of advanced chips to China in exchange
for a 15% cut of the revenue, despite concerns from national
security experts that such chips will end up in the hands of Chinese
military and intelligence services. That same month, Trump announced
that the U.S. government had taken a 10 percent stake in Intel worth
around $11 billion.
Then, Nvidia announced last month that it’s investing $5 billion in
Intel and will collaborate with the struggling semiconductor
company.
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