NVIDIA’s ferocious rise to become the king of mega-cap stocks has also propelled the company to surpass the value of the entire stock market of the world’s largest economy. On Tuesday, NVIDIA’s market capitalization topped $3.3 trillion, surpassing Microsoft to become the largest stock in the United States. But the company’s market capitalization already exceeded the cumulative value of the entire stock markets of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, measured individually and in US dollars. This was noted by Deutsche Bank in its “Chart of the Day.” Deutsche Bank said only India, Japan, China and the United States have stock markets larger than NVIDIA alone. NVIDIA has become the primary way investors are betting on the rise of artificial intelligence. Large language models such as OpenAI, which have been deployed over the past year, rely on high-performance semiconductors to run efficiently. NVIDIA is thought to be well ahead of its peers in this chip race. Semiconductors are traditionally a cyclical business, but Wall Street analysts expect Nvidia to continue growing for years to come, as AI investments across the business world are likely to be prolonged. This enthusiasm shows no signs of slowing down. According to Deutsche Bank, Nvidia’s market capitalization has increased by $1 trillion in just 23 trading days since May 20, the fastest increase on record. For comparison, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has a total of only about $900 billion after 135 years. The rise has also raised concerns about the concentration of the U.S. stock market in a few technology stocks. Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft alone have a combined market capitalization approaching $10 trillion, according to Deutsche Bank, which is the same as the market capitalization of the entire S&P 500 index in 2010.
