Around 14:45 GMT, the title of the group of Santa Clara (California) took 24.68%, which allowed Nvidia to approach the trillion dollars of market capitalization, a very closed circle that has only five members for the moment, including four American technology flagships.
Founded thirty years ago by Taiwanese-American engineer Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang, this company little known to the general public initially saw its future in video games.
It has developed graphics processors (GPUs) to improve image quality for gamers.
These chips have a computing capacity much higher than that of a conventional computer, a potential that quickly interested developers of artificial intelligence (AI), which is demanding in data processing.
Some of these GPUs cost tens of thousands of dollars each.
On Wednesday, after trading, Nvidia reported results above expectations but especially published an astronomical forecast for its second quarter, which would represent an increase of 64% compared to the same quarter of 2022.
During the conference call to present the results, Jensen Huang explained that the world of data centers, essential to remote computing (cloud), is beginning a major transition and technological upgrade, in particular to cope with the new requirements of AI.
The executive estimated that the investments to be made could reach a trillion dollars in the coming years, of which Nvidia intends to capture a significant part.
"We have competition in all directions," Huang acknowledged, but "we are the cheapest solution" for companies that want to improve their data processing capabilities.
Nvidia does not just sell processors and offers to design and build "data centers" from scratch, said the emblematic boss of the group, known for his casual look and taste for leather jackets.
The Californian group is among the best placed to take advantage of the current craze for so-called generative AI, that is to say able to create content without human intervention on request in everyday language, thanks to large databases.
"In 22 years of coverage of the tech sector and large caps, we have never seen a prediction of this magnitude, which confirms that the monetization of AI (...) is well underway," analysts at Wedbush Securities said in a note.
© 2023 AFP