AI giant Nvidia makes history as first $4 tn company
"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 President Donald Trump has walked back his most draconian tariffs, which pummeled 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 $4 trillion marks a new threshold in a fairly consistent rise over the last two years as AI enthusiasm has built.
In 2025 so far, the company's shares have risen 20 percent, whereas the Nasdaq has gained six percent.
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 programs 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 realized 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 $600 billion 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 $19 billion despite a $4.5 billion 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.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Zawya
an hour ago
- Zawya
AI-Generated Media Drives Real-World Fraud, Identity Theft, and Business Compromise
Trend Micro uncovers the criminal playbook for deepfake-enabled cybercrime HONG KONG SAR - Media OutReach Newswire - 10 July 2025 - Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global cybersecurity leader, today released a new report exposing the scale and maturity of deepfake-enabled cybercrime. As generative AI tools become more powerful, affordable, and accessible, cybercriminals are rapidly adopting them to support attacks, ranging from business fraud to extortion and identity theft. To read the full report, Deepfake it 'til You Make It: A Comprehensive View of the New AI Criminal Toolset, please visit: The report shows how deepfakes have moved beyond hype into real-world exploitation, undermining digital trust, exposing companies to new risks, and accelerating the business models of cybercriminals. Tony Lee, Head of Consulting, Hong Kong & Macau, at Trend:"AI-generated media is not just a future risk, it's a real business threat. We're seeing executives impersonated, hiring processes compromised, and financial safeguards bypassed with alarming ease. This research is a wake up call—if businesses are not proactively preparing for the deepfake era, they're already behind. In a world where seeing is no longer believing, digital trust must be rebuilt from the ground up." The research found that threat actors no longer need underground expertise to launch convincing attacks. Instead, they are using off-the-shelf video, audio, and image generation platforms, many of which are marketed to content creators, to generate realistic deepfakes that deceive both individuals and organizations. These tools are inexpensive, easy to use, and increasingly capable of bypassing identity verification systems and security controls. The report outlines a growing cybercriminal ecosystem where these platforms are used to execute convincing scams, including: CEO fraud has become increasingly harder to detect as attackers use deepfake audio or video to impersonate senior leaders in real-time meetings. Recruitment processes are being compromised by fake candidates who use AI to pass interviews and gain unauthorized access to internal systems. Financial services firms are seeing a surge in deepfake attempts to bypass KYC (Know Your Customer) checks, enabling anonymous money laundering through falsified credentials. The criminal underground is actively trading tutorials, toolkits, and services to streamline these operations. From step-by-step playbooks for bypassing onboarding procedures to plug-and-play face-swapping tools, the barrier to entry is now minimal. As deepfake-enabled scams grow in frequency and complexity, businesses are urged to take proactive steps to minimize their risk exposure and protect their people and processes. This includes educating staff on social engineering risks, reviewing authentication workflows, and exploring detection solutions for synthetic #trendmicro #trendvisionone #visionone #cybersecurity The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. About Trend Micro Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world. Trend Micro
Zawya
2 hours ago
- Zawya
AI chip startup Groq discusses $6bln valuation, The Information reports
U.S. semiconductor startup Groq has spoken to investors about raising between $300 million and $500 million at a $6 billion post-investment valuation, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The company is seeking the cash to fulfill a recently inked deal with Saudi Arabia, the report said. In February, Groq secured a $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its advanced artificial intelligence chips to the country. Groq has told investors that the contracts in Saudi Arabia will help the company bring in about $500 million in revenue this year, the report added. Groq did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. In August last year, Groq raised $640 million in a Series D funding round led by Cisco Investments, Samsung Catalyst Fund and BlackRock Private Equity Partners, among others, which brought its valuation to $2.8 billion. The Silicon Valley firm is known for producing AI inference chips that optimize speed and execute commands of pre-trained models. (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
Arabian Business
2 hours ago
- Arabian Business
Nvidia becomes first publicly-traded company to cross $4 trillion market cap
Fuelled by an unprecedented demand for its AI-facilitating chips, Nvidia continued its dizzying run to become the first company in the world to cross a market capitalisation of US$4 trillion when its shares rose past US$164 during Wednesday's trading. The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker reached a day's high of US$164.42 after opening at US$161.19. It finally closed the session up 1.8 per cent at US$162.88, giving the company a market cap of US$3.97 trillion. Nvidia leads tech giants in market cap Wall Street's darling leads over Microsoft, its biggest customer, and Apple, who hit the $3 trillion mark much before, but are now No. 2 and No. 3 in market cap at US$3.74 trillion and US$3.15 trillion, respectively. At around 7.5 per cent, Nvidia has the biggest weight in the S&P 500, which is viewed by investors as the benchmark for the US stock market. The top seven companies in S&P 500 weights also include Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Broadcom, which together make up for about one-third of the index. Founded in 1993, Nvidia first surpassed the US$2 trillion mark in February 2024 and zoomed past $3 trillion in June, meaning its valuation has doubled in just 16 months. On 9 July, 2020, the company's stock was trading at US$10.59. In five years, it has increased by 1436.26 per cent, which means a US$100 investment has now become US$1,536.26. It started the year 2023 at US$14.85. This year, Nvidia's shares are up about 22 per cent against a 6 per cent rise for the S&P 500, despite a warning from CEO Jensen Huang that the US restrictions on selling chips to China would led to a $8 billion loss in sales to the company. 'The US$50 billion China market is effectively closed to US industry,' Huang said during an earnings call in May, when his company reported a 69 per cent year-on-year revenue growth to US$44 billion for the first quarter.
