On Friday, Nvidia Corp.’s stock soared following a record-setting rally, overtaking Apple as the world’s largest company based on market capitalization.
The California-headquartered company’s shares advanced 0.80% to $141.54 apiece on October 25, tempered by a 0.35% after-hours correction. Nevertheless, analysts anticipate a 0.78% gain to $142.64 in the coming trading session.
Nvidia’s valuation briefly touched $3.53 trillion, fueled by insatiable demand for its specialized artificial intelligence (AI) chips. This further highlighted the GPU maker’s stellar performance in 2024, up 16.55% month-to-date and 185.81% year-to-date.
This was already the second time the semiconductor business held the market cap crown this year. Nvidia became the most valuable company for a few days in June before being bumped down to third by Apple and Microsoft.
Industry watchers agree that Nvidia has emerged as the biggest winner in the fierce competition between Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms. Most tech giants ramped up their purchases of the Silicon Valley chipmaker’s advanced AI chips to accelerate GenAI development.
Chip stocks surged at last week’s close, boosted by Western Digital’s earnings beat of $1.78 versus forecasts of $1.71. The digital storage business attributed the upbeat performance to the 54.00% sales growth of its cloud division’s AI-optimized Flash and HDD products.
Lastly, analysts predict that widespread AI adoption will continue to accelerate unless the US suffers a massive economic downturn.
Apple Q3 Sales Growth Guidance Lower Than Nvidia
Apple continued to struggle this month, lagging sharply behind Nvidia and other major tech stocks. Tepid demand for the iPhone 16 contributed to a 0.68% month-to-date decline in the firm’s share price.
The smartphone maker disclosed week-one iPhone 16 pre-sales of 38.50 million units, a 12.00% decline from the iPhone 15’s figure. In addition, the higher-priced models suffered even worse pre-sales drops of 27.00% and 16.00%, respectively.
Analysts anticipate Apple reporting a 5.55% quarter-over-quarter sales growth to $94.50 billion in Thursday’s third-quarter earnings call. In comparison, Nvidia is expected to disclose an 82.00% QoQ revenue increase to $32.90 billion in its Q3 earnings report on November 20.