AI giant Nvidia makes history as first US$4t company

Nvidia has now attained a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India. Photo / Getty Images

Nvidia has become the first company to reach US$4 trillion ($6.6t) in market value, a new threshold in Wall Street’s bet that artificial intelligence will transform the economy.

This week, stock in the company vaulted as high as US$164.42 ($274.25), giving it a valuation above US$4t, before retreating slightly.

“The market has an incredible certainty that AI is the future,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. “Nvidia is certainly the company most positioned to benefit from that gold rush.”

Nvidia has now attained a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India, a testament to investor confidence that AI will spur a new era of robotics and automation, potentially boosting productivity while also challenging incumbent sectors and companies.

The California chip company’s latest surge is helping to drive a recovery in the broader stock market, even as Nvidia itself outperforms major indices. Part of this is due to relief that US President Donald Trump has walked back his most draconian tariffs, which pummelled global markets in early April.

Even as Trump has announced new tariff actions in recent days, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have lingered near records.

“You’ve seen the markets walk us back from a worst-case scenario in terms of tariffs,” said Angelo Zino, technology analyst at CFRA Research.

While Nvidia still faces US export controls to China as well as broader tariff uncertainty, the company’s deal to build AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia during a Trump state visit in May showed there was also potential upside in Trump’s trade policy.

“We’ve seen the administration using Nvidia chips as a bargaining chip,” Zino said.

Bullish on 2026

Nvidia’s latest surge to US$4t marks a new threshold in a fairly consistent rise over the past two years as AI enthusiasm has built.

In 2025 so far, the company’s shares have risen 20%, whereas the Nasdaq has gained 6%.

The Taiwan-born Huang has wowed investors with a series of advances, including its core product: graphics processing units (GPUs), which are foundational to many of the generative AI programmes pursued throughout the technology sector, with applications in autonomous driving, robotics and other cutting-edge domains.

The company has also unveiled new advances in recent months, highlighting its Blackwell system, which Huang said in March will soon enable virtually all productions to be “created and brought to life long before it is realised physically”.

However, Nvidia’s winning streak was challenged early in 2025 following revelations about the Chinese DeepSeek venture, which prompted worries that AI investment growth would slow. The company lost some US$600b in market valuation during this period.

Nvidia’s Huang has welcomed DeepSeek as a growing presence in technology, while arguing against US export constraints.

In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported earnings of nearly US$19b despite a US$4.5b hit from US export controls designed to limit sales of cutting-edge technology to China.

The first-quarter earnings period also revealed that momentum for AI remained strong throughout the tech industry. Many of the biggest technology companies – Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta – are racing each other in the multi-billion-dollar race to win the AI race.

A recent UBS survey of technology executives showed Nvidia widening its lead over rivals.

Zino said Nvidia’s latest surge reflected a fuller understanding of DeepSeek, which has acted as a stimulant to investment for complex reasoning models rather than a threat to Nvidia’s business.

Nvidia is at the forefront of “AI agents”, the current focus in generative AI in which machines are able to reason and infer more than in the past, he said.

“Overall the demand landscape has improved for 2026 for these more complex reasoning models,” Zino said.

– Agence France-Presse