Nvidia overtakes Apple for the third time to become the most valuable company in the world

Nvidia has regained its title as the most valuable company in the world, surpassing Apple in market capitalization. This was due to the company’s dominant position in the graphics processing unit (GPU) market, which is critical for the development of artificial intelligence (AI). Nvidia shares rose 2% on Tuesday and are up about 5% so far in 2025.

Image source: NVIDIA

According to CNBC, this impressive rise is due to the huge demand for Nvidia’s AI chips over the past few years. At the same time, in 2024, the company’s shares grew by 171%, and in 2023 by almost 239%, demonstrating the growing demand for products. At the same time, Apple shares fell 3% on Tuesday, and since the beginning of the year they have fallen 11%, although they saw an increase of 30% in 2024.

Despite developing its own AI capabilities based on Apple Intelligence, Apple’s business does not have as high a level of involvement in the field of artificial intelligence, unlike Nvidia, which has the lion’s share of the market for GPUs used as key components for the development and deployment of AI models, for example ChatGPT by OpenAI. And even despite the slowdown in revenue growth, in the last quarter it almost doubled to $35.08 billion. Analysts also acknowledge that “Nvidia is the supplier of core technologies for the development of AI.”

If we talk about the rise stages of Apple and Nvidia, Apple was the first company to reach market capitalization of $1 trillion, $2 trillion and $3 trillion. However, Nvidia had already started to overtake Apple in June and then in November. At the close of trading on January 22, Nvidia’s market capitalization was about $3.45 trillion, while Apple’s was at $3.35 trillion.

It is worth mentioning Microsoft, which is third on the list of the most valuable companies – its capitalization is $3.2 trillion. At the same time, Microsoft, as a major buyer of Nvidia GPUs, previously said that in fiscal year 2025 it plans to spend $80 billion on the development of AI data centers.

In November 2024, Nvidia entered the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Intel and thus joining Apple and Microsoft as the blue chips of the US stock market.