Oct. 26 (UPI) — Chip-maker Nvidia on Friday briefly became the world’s most valuable company after surpassing Apple in total market value, but Apple regained its top position by the close of trading.
Nvidia shares reached a high of $144.13 Friday, which was a 3% increase and boosted Nvidia’s total value to $3.53 trillion compared with $3.52 trillion for Apple.
Both companies are based in the Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County, Calif.
Shareholders took advantage of the record-high price for Nvidia stock by selling off shares, which caused Nvidia’s share price to decline slightly to $3.52 trillion while Apple’s share price grew to a total market valuation of $3.53 trillion by the end of trading on Friday.
The Nvidia shares price closed at $141.54 on the NASDAQ market Friday.
The surge in shares price could continue for Nvidia as demand grows for the chip-maker’s products amid the rise of artificial intelligence.
Bank of America has raised its target price for Nvidia shares from $165 to $190, which would be a 38% rise in value from Friday.
The Bank of America analysts say Nvidia could maintain up to an 85% share of computer chips used to enable AI.
Nvidia also recently launched its Blackwell processors, the demand for which Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has described as “insane.”
Nvidia expects demand for its Blackwell chips to exceed the available supply in 2025 with tech firms, Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla and xAI among those expected to transition to the Blackwell chips.
The Blackwell chip is estimated to enable four times greater AI training performance and 30 times greater inference by AI programs compared to the currently used Hopper chip.
Nvidia shares have risen 740% in value since OpenAI launched its ChatGPT generative AI program in November 2022.
Nvidia produces the GPU chips used to power AI applications and has seen its market share grow by $3.1 trillion over the past two years.
Nvidia surpassed Microsoft in total value earlier this year.
