Nvidia passes Microsoft in market cap to become most valuable public company

Nvidia, long known in the niche gaming community for its graphics chips, is now the most valuable public company in the world.

Shares of the chipmaker climbed 3.6% on Tuesday, lifting the company's market cap to $3.34 trillion, surpassing Microsoft, which is now valued at $3.32 trillion. Earlier this month, Nvidia hit $3 trillion for the first time, and passed Apple.

Nvidia shares are up more than 170% so far this year, and went a leg higher after the company reported first-quarter earnings in May. The stock has multiplied by more than ninefold since the end of 2022, a rise that's coincided with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.

Apple shares fell 1.1% on Tuesday, giving the iPhone maker a $3.29 trillion market value.

Nvidia has about 80% of the market for AI chips used in data centers, a business that's ballooned as OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and others have raced to snap up the processors needed to build AI models and run increasingly large workloads.

For the most recent quarter, revenue in Nvidia's data center business rose 427% from a year earlier to $22.6 billion, accounting for about 86% of the chipmaker's total sales.

Founded in 1991, Nvidia spent its first few decades primarily as a hardware company that sold chips for gamers to run 3D titles. It's also dabbled in cryptocurrency mining chips and cloud gaming subscriptions.

But over the past two years, Nvidia shares have skyrocketed as Wall Street came to recognize the company's technology as the engine behind an explosion in AI that shows no signs of slowing. The rally has lifted co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang's net worth to about $117 billion, making him the 11th wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes.

Microsoft shares are