Nvidia briefly became the first company to reach a $5 trillion valuation in October 2025, hitting the milestone just three months after surpassing $4 trillion.
The chipmaker's stock has climbed roughly 12-fold since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, transforming the company from a graphics processor specialist into the central supplier for modern AI infrastructure.
The company now commands an 81% market share by revenue for data center chips, according to International Data Corporation research. Nvidia's October quarter sales and profits rose more than 60% from a year earlier, beating Wall Street expectations.
CEO Jensen Huang announced $500 billion in AI chip orders in late October and said the company plans to build seven supercomputers for the U.S. government.
Nvidia projects 2026 revenue will reach approximately $500 billion, which would mark another record year. The company's rapid ascent began in 1993 when Huang founded it around graphics processing units originally aimed at video games.
Those GPUs later proved well-suited for training AI models, with the ChatGPT release triggering wider adoption of generative AI technology.
The chipmaker sells complete server racks with other components needed for heavy AI workloads, plus software that helps developers optimize code for its hardware. Nvidia is positioning itself at the center of what it calls "AI factories," while expanding into adjacent markets including robotics, quantum computing and autonomous vehicles.
Competitive pressure is increasing despite Nvidia's dominance. Rivals including AMD are pushing harder into the AI chip market, while some major customers are developing in-house alternatives.
U.S. export controls have restricted sales of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China, though Huang reportedly persuaded former President Donald Trump to roll back some limitations.
Nvidia's next growth phase will come from its Vera Rubin chips, scheduled for release in the second half of 2026. Early adopters are expected to include Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and CoreWeave.
"Our vision is that, someday, every single car, every single truck will be autonomous," Huang said recently about the company's expanding ambitions beyond data centers.
The company reached $1 trillion in market value in 2023, $2 trillion in February 2024, $3 trillion in June 2024, and $4 trillion in July 2025 before hitting the $5 trillion mark in October.
Each successive trillion-dollar milestone has come faster than the last, reflecting accelerating demand for AI computing power across global industries.
