Nvidia becomes the world's first company to surpass the $4 trillion market capitalization threshold

In an optimistic market , unconcerned by Donald Trump's new tariff threats, Nvidia's stock rose 1.91% to $163.10 around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 9. Earlier, it had surpassed $164, giving the chip giant, buoyed by investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, a market capitalization of more than $4 trillion. For comparison, this is larger than the GDP of France, the United Kingdom, or India.

"Nvidia is the strongest stock in the market right now ," Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments told AFP. " If you look at the market, it's a reflection or a mirror of the economy, and the strongest sectors of the economy are, by far, technology and AI [...] that's why Nvidia is worth so much and continues to grow." Since the beginning of the year, the company's share price has jumped by more than 20%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq index has seen a more measured gain of more than 6%.

But Nvidia's strong stock performance hasn't been without a break. The company's stock market plunged in January amid the success of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which has managed to build AI models comparable to those of OpenAI (ChatGPT) and other leading American companies, using fewer and less sophisticated components (including Nvidia's H20 chips).

In just a few hours, Nvidia had wiped out nearly $600 billion in market capitalization. The processor and graphics card maker's return to form represents "just accumulating enthusiasm," but "it tells us everything about the present and nothing about the future," Kim Forrest of Bokeh Capital Partners warned to AFP.