NVIDIA Briefly Outperforms Amazon In Market Value Due To AI Frenzy

(CTN News) – Nvidia (NVDA.O) briefly passed Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) on Monday in market capitalization, as the euphoria around artificial intelligence catapulted the chipmaker to the fourth most valuable company in the United States.

Nvidia’s market value peaked at a record high of $734.96, according to LSEG data, which compared to Amazon.com’s $1.81 trillion market value and Alphabet’s $1.87 trillion market value, Nvidia’s market value was $1.82 trillion, merely a few billions away from the $1.82 trillion market value of Google’s owner Alphabet (GOOGL.O).

In 2002, Nvidia’s market value was over $6 billion, and Amazon’s value was under $6 billion. That was the last time Nvidia was more valuable than Amazon.

Investors are focused this earnings season on Nvidia’s quarterly results on Feb 21 as the last of the megacap firms to report their earnings during this quarter due to Amazon’s higher-than-expected holiday quarter sales last month.

A high level of expectations is being set ahead of the report, after the stock has gained 47% year-to-date, making it the biggest gainer among the S&P 500 components year-to-date.

The staggering quarterly results and the strong forecasts from a year ago established that the chip designer was at the forefront of supplying hardware to companies working towards creating so-called generative AI in the form of chatbots and machine learning.

In the past 12 months, Nvidia shares have soared 223% on the back of strong AI demand, making it the best performing stock among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” with a 223% increase over a year ago. In second place is Meta Platforms (META.O), which has seen a 163% increase in the last year.

As of January 8, Microsoft was the world’s most valuable company, surpassing Apple (AAPL.O) which ranked third in terms of value, and Alphabet, which ranked fourth.

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