Most Valuable Company: Nvidia Continues to Gain on Apple

Nvidia has been making leaps with its high-end chips and is set to continue its dramatic innovations.

The company most renowned for its semiconductors could soon surpass iPhone-maker Apple as the second-most valuable company. Its chips have helped its stock nearly triple in value over the past year to US$2.68tn, becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar semiconductor stock.

This contrasts to Apple, which has been struggling in recent months to garner customer demand. With less interest in its iPhones and increasing competition from Chinese markets, it was last valued at US$2.92tn, according to Reuters.

With Apple seeking to invest further into its generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) strategy, the global technology landscape continues to remain very competitive.

AI remains a priority for ‘big tech’

AI tools are continuing to garner plenty of business interest and are very much in public consciousness. In fact, tools like ChatGPT are setting records for the fastest-growing consumer application in history, with more than 100 million active users.

Amongst this, Nvidia is consistently recognised for its pivotal role in graphics processing units (GPUs) and their development for gaming and enterprise applications. In the wake of a global chip shortage, multiple big tech companies have been eager to get their hands on the technology to boost their AI products.

GPUs remain essential to the AI race as they work to significantly reduce the time it takes to train AI models. Some of the benefits that this can afford a company are real-time processing and enhanced decision-making.

Find some of the most valuable use cases for Nvidia Gen AI HERE.

As a result of this need, Nvidia became the fastest company to grow from US$1tn to US$2tn in 2024, with Reuters stating that the company overtook tech competitors Amazon and Google parent company Alphabet.

The organisation has successfully anticipated the needs of its customers, matching innovation with demand. Today, services from Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, among others, are built and run on Nvidia AI technologies. The company has also worked to help businesses unlock greater AI potential, including the introduction of a new AI chip range in the wake of US export restrictions that were imposed on the People’s Republic of China last year.

Speaking earlier in the year on the company’s continued ‘reinvention of computing’, company CEO Jensen Huang remarked: “Our strong growth reflects the broad industry platform transition from general-purpose to accelerated computing and Gen AI.

“Nvidia GPUs, CPUs, networking, AI foundry services and Nvidia AI Enterprise software are all growth engines in full throttle. The era of generative AI is taking off.”

Competition with Apple

Competition with fellow technology companies, including Apple, is continuing to accelerate. 

At the start of 2024, the tech giant conceded its market position to Microsoft, being overtaken as the world’s most valuable company. The company continues to experience weaker demand, as it fights to reprioritise to bolder AI strategies.

Recently, it acquired Canadian AI startup DarwinAI earlier in 2024 to continue developing accessible AI technologies for a range of industries.

Likewise, in recent days (June 2024), the company has reportedly struck a deal to include OpenAI’s Gen AI technology in Apple’s software. With OpenAI’s existing relationship with Microsoft, it will be interesting to see how the companies navigate around each other as they seek to remain competitive.

As far as Nvidia is concerned, competition is ramping up more than ever as increasing numbers of companies seek to ramp up cloud and AI development. 

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