In this multiple exposure you can see the microchip and Nvidia logo displayed on the phone screen … [+]
This week, NVIDIA finally briefly surpassed the stock price of the dominant Apple empire, before settling at a market cap of $3.47 trillion, making Apple worth $3.52 trillion.
The Associated Press report shows just how close this is, with a graph showing Nvidia’s rise against the other two big tech companies, Apple and Microsoft.
“The Silicon Valley chipmaker is a leading supplier of processors used in AI computing, making it the biggest winner in the race between Microsoft, Alphabet, Metaplatform and other heavyweights to monopolize the emerging technology. ” writes Associated Press reporter Sruti Shankar. and Noel Landiwich. NVIDIA stock, known since the 1990s as a designer of video game processors, has seen a series of gains since October, after OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a $6.6 billion funding round. It has increased by about 18%.”
Microsoft’s current value is approximately $3.18 trillion, slightly less than the other two companies.
Nvidia’s past stock activity
Looking back, we can see that Nvidia briefly won against the same competitor in June of this year as well. Previously, the company’s stock price was less than $100 per share, but it finally soared earlier this year and has continued to rise.
At around $140 per share, the giant is currently on track to be crowned the world’s most valuable company.
Difference between Nvidia and Apple
For the market, this represents a major shift from one type of technology to another.
This can be expressed in three different ways.
You could say that Apple makes consumer technology and Nvidia makes “back-end” server/hardware technology.
You could say that Apple makes the endpoint technology and Nvidia makes the supply technology.
Or you could say that Apple makes the devices you can use and Nvidia makes the hardware that allows AI to think.
With products like the A100 GPU, Nvidia is a leading manufacturer of AI hardware. And everyone wants this, from Microsoft and BlackRock to all sorts of players participating in the AI revolution.
ASIC threats
While Nvidia’s own chips are powerful in their own right, analysts say many companies are investing in their own hardware in the form of custom chips, known in the industry as application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. I am.
Some people closest to the phenomenon point to companies like Broadcom (AVGO) as potential competitors that could emerge as customers seek out ASIC technology.
But Nvidia also has its own efforts in the ASIC market, which will obviously hurt the technology.
“There has been speculation that fixed-function application-specific circuits (ASICs) might one day overthrow NVIDIA’s GPU-centric approach,” writes Karl Fruend of Moor Insights and Strategy. “Now, NVIDIA itself appears to be adopting this approach, albeit to a limited extent, announcing its own ASIC technology to accelerate deep learning. In a surprisingly bold move, the company is We also announced that we will open source the technology and allow other companies to use it to build chips.”
Perhaps that axis will help address one of the major threats to market dominance.
Either way, this is timely news because it shows that AI is dominant. We’re watching this technology bloom before our eyes in real time, and after years of relative obscurity, it looks like Nvidia has emerged victorious, at least for now.
