Despite the crushing sanctions and restrictions, and against all odds, NVIDIA has once again beaten the rest of the tech giants to another feat: becoming the first company with a market valuation of US$5 trillion (~RM21 trillion).
The company’s achievement comes less than six months after it was valued at US$4 trillion (~RM16.8 trillion). Now, the company has pulled ahead of Microsoft and Apple, both of which were also recently given the same market valuation. “I think we are probably the first technology company in history to have visibility into half a trillion dollars in revenue,” Huang said, referring to orders for the company’s current Blackwell generation and upcoming Rubin chips scheduled to launch next year.
It’s been a rather tumultuous year for NVIDIA, with the company catching heat, both from its home country and in China. The GPU brand has been doing its level best, circumventing the many trade restrictions imposed on its AI chips. It ultimately reached a deal with the current Trump administration, promising to give 15% of all sales of its AI chips to China to the coffers of the US government.
On the other end of the political spectrum, though, China is currently banning its local tech companies from purchasing NVIDIA GPUs, particularly the watered-down H20 and RTX Pro 6000D models, stating that their homegrown AI chips were already on par with those models. Sounds unlikely, given the recent Reuters report that alleges China’s continued dependence on the brand’s H100 chips to further its endeavours in militarising AI.
It hasn’t been all doom and gloom for NVIDIA, though. Recently, the company signed a partnership with Nokia, promising to invest US$1 billion (~RM4.2 billion) to develop telecommunications equipment that would incorporate its chips into 5G and 6G networks.
