Nvidia launches became the fourth most valuable U.S. corporation on Monday — temporarily surpassing Amazon.com Inc. and opening a new chapter in market capitalization as the chipmaker was propelled to prominence by the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence. “It seems that Nvidia has gone up every day so far this year,” says Ben Reitzes of Melius Research. At its peak price of $734.96, Nvidia’s market value was $1.82 trillion, compared to the retail master, Amazon.com’s $1.81 trillion and only a few billion short of Alphabet, the company that owns Google.

Nvidia was more valuable than Amazon in 2002 — when each company was worth $6 billion. With shares up 47% year to date and ranking as the most significant gain among S&P 500 components, expectations were high going into the report. Investors will be watching Nvidia’s quarterly results on February 21, the last of the megacap companies to report this earnings season, especially following the company’s better-than-expected holiday quarter sales last month.

In January, Microsoft surpassed Apple to take the top spot as the most valuable business in the world, with Alphabet coming in third.

A year ago, Nvidia’s stellar predictions and impressive quarterly results proved that the chip manufacturer was leading the way in providing to tech companies developing so-called generative AI, such as chatbots and image creation. Nvidia’s stock has soared 223% over the last 12 months, making it the highest-performing stock among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” on the company’s strong AI demand forecast. With a 163% increase, Meta Platforms comes in second.

The so-called “Magnificent Seven” — Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla — have dominated the S&P 500 this year as investors scooped up shares of megacap tech names.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Stas Knop; Pexels

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