According to CNN, Nvidia became the first company in history to briefly surpass a $5 trillion valuation in October. The tech giant’s rise stems from massive demand for its AI chips. Research from the International Data Corporation shows Nvidia holds 81% market share by revenue for data center chips. Its stock has climbed 12-fold since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022.
Record Sales Drive Growth
Nvidia’s sales and profits jumped more than 60% in the October quarter compared to the previous year. The results beat Wall Street expectations. Last month, the company released its next-generation Vera Rubin chip. Analysts view it as the next growth driver. Nvidia projects total sales will reach around $500 billion in 2026.
CEO Jensen Huang founded the company in 1993 with a focus on graphics processing units for video games. The chips later proved well suited for AI training. Nvidia reached a $1 trillion valuation in 2023, three decades after its start. The company now offers full server racks with chips critical to AI workloads. It also provides software that lets developers optimize code for its hardware.
Expanding Into New Markets
Nvidia is positioning itself at the center of emerging technologies. It announced partnerships with Uber to build self-driving cars. The company also teamed with the US Department of Energy to develop quantum supercomputers. In April, Nvidia said it plans to build $500 billion of AI infrastructure with partners in the US. In September, it invested $5 billion in Intel to develop custom data centers. Days later, Nvidia announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI, investing up to $100 billion to expand AI data center capacity.
Global Expansion and Challenges
Nvidia is working with telecoms and governments in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom to deploy AI infrastructure. In South Korea, it is collaborating with government and businesses to deploy over 26,000 chips. The company faces growing competition from AMD and customers developing their own chips. US tech controls have restricted exports of cutting-edge chips to China, significantly impacting sales. Nvidia’s new Rubin chips will arrive in the second half of 2026. Major cloud providers like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud will be among the first to use them.
