Nvidia is truly a "wealthy country" - currently, Nvidia's market value has surpassed the economic size of countries such as Russia, South Korea, and Australia.
On the 26th Eastern Time, Nvidia's stock closed at $790.92, with a market value of $1.98 trillion. According to data released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in February, edited by Forbes, this number exceeds the GDP of all countries in the world except for 11, including Russia, South Korea, and Australia.
Of course, comparing the market value of a stock with a country's GDP is not a scientific approach. But this comparison can at least make people truly and concretely feel the rapid rise of Nvidia.
Since 2024, Nvidia's stock price has risen by over 60%, while in 2023 it has more than doubled. Its market value has surpassed Amazon and Google, reaching nearly $2 trillion, becoming the third largest company in the US stock market and the fourth largest company in the world.
Behind this, it is thanks to the AI big model and the strong growth of Sora.
Before ChatGPT was launched at the end of October 2022, Nvidia's stock price dropped to $108.
In November 2022, ChatGPT emerged as a large language model applied in dialogue scenarios, capable of answering questions, rejecting inappropriate requests, and possessing stunning thinking chain reasoning and zero sample problem-solving abilities. A few days ago, the release of Sora made the industry instantly boil. Based on text, high-quality short videos of up to 1 minute can be produced. People have new expectations for AI to understand the physical world, and more and more people are joining the AI big model entrepreneurship army for "gold mining".
If the big model is a gold rush, then Nvidia is selling shovels. As a provider of underlying computing power, Nvidia's stock price has risen sixfold in just over a year.
From $1 trillion to $2 trillion, Nvidia only took 8 months, less than half the time it took for Apple and Microsoft, setting a new record
Not to mention how many practical large model products entrepreneurs can create, at least Nvidia has made money first. About half of Nvidia's revenue comes from consumer Internet companies, and the other half comes from cloud manufacturers.
In fact, Nvidia's stock price has not risen like a rocket powered by technology for the first time. As early as 2016, Google's AlphaGo defeated South Korean Go expert Lee Sedol. A large number of companies are entering artificial intelligence and increasing research on deep learning. At that time, cloud vendors were deploying Nvidia GPUs on their own cloud platforms to enhance computing power. Several technology giants in the United States, as well as BAT in China, have become customers of Nvidia. In 2017, Nvidia became the world's largest independent GPU manufacturer, occupying 70% of the market share, and its stock price increased by 8 times compared to 2015!
Generative artificial intelligence is giving birth to a new industry
In fact, this is a microcosm of the changes in the industry landscape brought about by technological change - each round of technological change often starts with hardware. More than 20 years ago it was Cisco, 10 years ago it was Apple, and today it is Nvidia.
Take Cisco as an example. At the end of the 1990s, the Internet boom was dominated by Cisco routers. It also tells the story of Internet hardware, once occupying more than 80% of the market share of network routers. However, when the Internet foam burst in 2001, Cisco's share price fell by two-thirds, and has not yet reached the peak of that year.
This also made many people worried about Nvidia, who believed that AI had given birth to a foam. Ultimately, Nvidia's performance and stock price are entirely based on people's belief in the AI era. If this belief fails to be realized, then Nvidia's fate is self-evident.
Meanwhile, Nvidia also faces challenges from the industry. Microsoft is developing a new network card product to improve the performance of its AI chip Maia, ultimately achieving the goal of reducing reliance on Nvidia products. AMD, Intel, and others are also working hard to develop and have launched products that directly benchmark against NVIDIA H100.
So, it is still unknown whether NVIDIA can hold on to the "extraordinary wealth" brought about by AI.