Computer chip maker Nvidia briefly joined the club of $1 trillion companies as demand for artificial intelligence technology peaked. The milestone was hit in early US trading on May 30, with shares of the maker of computer chips and graphics cards hitting a daily high of more than $418, according to Google Finance.
Nvidia shares closed the day at just over $401, and the company now has a market cap of $992 million. Nvidia is up more than 180% year-to-date as demand soars for graphics processing units (GPUs) that power generative artificial intelligence tools .
Analysts said 80 percent of these GPUs are currently manufactured by Nvidia, Reuters reported on May 30. Some may see Nvidia's recent price breakout as a sign of an overheated market, but other analysts say Nvidia still has plenty of room to grow and suggest the AI boom may just be getting started.
"Technology traders and AI mania have pushed Nvidia toward the $1 trillion cap, and it's not cheap," said analyst Jim Kelleher of Argus Research. Nvidia isn't the only company looking to bring AI-ready chips to market. Microsoft is reportedly developing its own AI chip to power AI applications for Sam Altman's artificial intelligence company OpenAI and its internal projects.
In April, former Twitter CEO Elon Musk bought thousands of general-purpose processors for an upcoming Twitter artificial intelligence project, according to two sources close to the company. As US tech companies and chipmakers scramble to keep up with all the advances in artificial int intelligence, Chinese developers are finding ways to work around sanctions that prevent local access to the latest versions of Nvidia chips.
