However, Nvidia’s shares climbed on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said he expected to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the company’s Blackwell chip. Trump said months ago he’d consider allowing Nvidia to export to China a downgraded version of the processor, and the hope is that such a deal might be on the table.
US President Donald Trump with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang in April.Credit: Bloomberg
Such an arrangement is not unprecedented. In recent years, Nvidia has skirted export restrictions by sending downgraded versions of its chips to the Chinese market, with the hamstrung technology falling short of the cutting-edge requirements that US administrations had specifically banned out of security concerns.
What’s Nvidia’s share price like?
Nvidia’s shares were trading at $US207.04 ($314.37) on Thursday morning (AEDT). As of the opening of trading on Wednesday in the US, its total market capitalisation was $US5.054 trillion.
In addition to the long-term AI boom and hopes of a deal with Beijing, earlier this week Nvidia disclosed $US500 billion in chip orders. In the past two months, it has also announced a $US100 billion investment in OpenAI, a partnership with Uber on robotaxis and a $US1 billion investment in Nokia to work together on 6G technology.
How much is $US5 trillion dollars?
Compared to the value of other companies, Nvidia’s growth is stark.
It’s more than 33 times larger than Australia’s largest public company that isn’t a bank, mining giant BHP, which has a comparatively modest market capitalisation of $226 billion. It’s about 26 times bigger than the Commonwealth Bank, the biggest company in our market.
Indeed, it’s roughly twice the size of Australia’s entire sharemarket. The All Ordinaries, which tracks the value of the 500 largest companies in the market and makes up close to 90 per cent of the ASX, is worth about $3.4 trillion.
To put it into perspective, Nvidia’s value is more closely compared to output of some of the world’s major economies.
It is larger than the gross domestic product of Japan, the world’s fourth-largest economy ($US4.28 trillion), according to the International Monetary Fund. It is the same as Germany’s entire economic output.
Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia.Credit: Bloomberg
What other companies have been valued at more than $US1 trillion?
Only a handful of publicly traded companies have reached a valuation of more than $US1 trillion, and they’ve mostly been tech firms.
As of the close of trading on Tuesday, Microsoft, at $4.04 trillion, and Apple, at $3.99 trillion, were next among the most valuable companies in the S&P 500. Alphabet (the owner of Google), Amazon, and Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) have also reached the milestone.
Who is Nvidia’s CEO?
Founder Jensen Huang is known for his black leather jackets and a tattoo that resembles the Nvidia logo.
He has previously spoken of the philosophy that he used to propel the company to its current position. “Run, don’t walk,” he told university students in Taiwan in 2023. “Either you are running for food, or you are running from becoming food.”
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang waves as US President Donald Trump speaks during an AI conference in Washington in July.Credit: AP
Huang’s net worth is $US178.9 billion according to Forbes, putting him eighth on its Real-Time Billionaires List. Elon Musk is No. 1 at $US499.4 billion.
Through his leadership of Nvidia, he has met with Trump and repeatedly urged for the loosening of export restrictions to China, a development which now appears to have propelled the company to its greatest height.
With AP, Bloomberg
