NVIDIA just passed Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company

NVIDIA has now overtaken Microsoft in market value, officially becoming the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. On Tuesday, NVIDIA shares rose over 3% to $141.40, lifting its market cap to $3.45 trillion, just ahead of Microsoft’s $3.44 trillion.

The battle for the title of most valuable company has gone back and forth between NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Apple for the past year. But NVIDIA’s momentum, fueled by surging demand for AI chips, is showing no signs of slowing.

Its first-quarter results showed $44 billion in revenue, up 69% from last year. That kind of growth, at this scale, is rare. It’s largely coming from cloud and AI giants like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Oracle, all of whom rely on NVIDIA’s chips to power massive AI models.

This has made both NVIDIA and Microsoft central players in the AI economy—one providing the hardware, the other driving software and cloud infrastructure. Chip stocks overall surged Tuesday, with Broadcom up 3% and Micron gaining 4%. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF also climbed 2%.

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NVIDIA last held the top spot in January. Whether or not it stays there, the company’s rise marks a shift: the race to build AI at scale is now the most valuable game in tech, and both NVIDIA and Microsoft are leading it.