FILE PHOTO: A smartphone with a displayed NVIDIA logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
(Reuters) - Nvidia dethroned Apple as the world's most valuable company on Friday, following a record-setting rally in the stock powered by an insatiable demand for its new supercomputing AI chips.
Nvidia's stock market value briefly touched $3.53 trillion, while that of Apple was $3.52 trillion, according to data from LSEG.
In June, Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable company, before it was overtaken by Microsoft and Apple. The tech trio's market capitalizations have been neck-and-neck for several months. Microsoft's market value stood at $3.20 trillion.
Nvidia's stock has risen about 18% so far in October, with a string of gains coming after OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a funding round of $6.6 billion. Nvidia provides chips used to train so-called foundation models such as OpenAI's GPT-4.
"More companies are now embracing artificial intelligence in their everyday tasks and demand remains strong for Nvidia chips," said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
"It is certainly in a sweet spot and so long as we avoid a big economic downturn in the United States, there is a feeling that companies will continue to invest heavily in AI capabilities, creating a healthy tailwind for Nvidia."
Nvidia's shares hit a record high on Tuesday, building on a rally from last week when TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted a forecast-beating 54% jump in quarterly profit driven by soaring demand for chips used in AI.
The next big test will be when Nvidia reports third-quarter results in November. Nvidia in August forecast third-quarter revenue of $32.5 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared with the current average analyst expectation of $32.90 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said in a note dated Oct. 10 that he remains "very bullish" about the company longer term, but the recent rally "raises the bar for earnings somewhat".
After a meeting with Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, Moore noted the ramp up in production of its next-generation Blackwell chips appeared to be "quite strong" and are booked out for 12 months. The stock came under pressure in August after Nvidia confirmed reports that the production of Blackwell chips was delayed until the fourth quarter.
Shares of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft have an outsized influence on the richly valued technology sector as well as the broader U.S. stock market, with the trio accounting for about a fifth of the S&P 500 index's weightage.
Frenzy around the prospects of AI, expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will considerably bring down interest rates, and most recently, an upbeat start to the earnings season, have pushed the benchmark S&P 500 to an all-time high last week.
Nvidia's massive gains have helped boost the stock's appeal for option traders and the company's options are among the most traded on any given day in recent months, according to data from options analytics provider Trade Alert.
The stock has surged nearly 190% so far this year as a boom in generative AI prompted the company to issue a series of blowout forecasts.
"The question is whether the revenue stream will last for a long time and will be driven by the emotion of investors rather than by any ability to prove or disprove the thesis that AI is overdone," said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey.
"I think Nvidia knows that near term, their numbers are likely to be quite remarkable."
(Reporting by Noel Randewich in San Francisco, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Saqib Ahmed in New York and Paolo Laudani in Gdansk; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
