Nvidia dethrones Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company

Chip-maker Nvidia dethroned fellow tech giant Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company after its share prices surged to an all-time high, Tuesday. 

Stocks ended trading day at nearly $136, up by 3.5 percent, making Nvidia more valuable than Microsoft. It overtook Apple earlier this month. 

The company’s value soared to an impressive US$ 3.34 trillion, nearly double of its price since the beginning of this year.  

“It’s really a big thank you to everyone we work with that have really made this possible for us. The generative AI journey is really transforming businesses and telcos around the world. We’re just at the beginning” Nvidia Global Head of Business Development Chris Penrose commented as reported by BBC. 

He opined that the company achieved the record valuation as a result of more than 30 years of dedicated work in the AI field. 

However, Analysts believe the meteoric rise was fueled by Nvidia’s dominance of what they call the "new gold or oil in the tech sector" - the chips needed for artificial intelligence (AI). 

Nvidia has reaped out well from the global boost in demand for chips that train and run generative AI models, the most well-known to be OpenAI's ChatGPT. 

The firm has also benefitted significantly from a rush to mine Bitcoin in 2020, which saw a sharp uptick in sales of its graphics cards, according to BBC. 

Moreover, Nvidia's value has also come from its competition with rival AMD, in a race to make the best graphics cards. Eight years ago, the stock was worth less than 1% of its current price. 

The rise and rise of the tech giant are also mirrored by the increasingly high profile of its leader, Jensen Huang.  

People have dubbed the 61-year-old electrical engineer the "Taylor Swift of tech" for the celebrity status he has achieved.