Nvidia’s $4 trillion market cap puts it within 5% of surpassing India’s GDP: 5 things to know

Nvidia on Wednesday became the first publicly traded company to surpass a $4 trillion market valuation amid the investor frenzy around artificial intelligence that has driven the Silicon Valley chipmaker’s meteoric rise.

At its peak on Wednesday, Nvidia’s market capitalisation briefly topped $4 trillion, just 5% shy of surpassing India’s GDP. The International Monetary Fund estimates India’s GDP at $4.2 trillion, expected to reach $4.27 trillion by end-2025.

Nvidia’s stock rose nearly 3% Wednesday, hitting a 52-week high. Shares have rallied 24% over the past year and are up 18% in 2025 alone, outperforming the Nasdaq Composite’s gains of 11% and 6.5% over the same periods. The rise is driven by surging demand for Nvidia’s industry-leading processors, critical for AI applications widely viewed as the biggest technological shift since the iPhone’s launch in 2007.

Nvidia is now worth about $900 billion more than Apple. The milestone marks a change of the guard in Silicon Valley. Apple became the first company to reach $1 trillion, $2 trillion, and $3 trillion valuations, largely on the back of iPhone sales.

Wednesday’s rally was fueled in part by news that Nvidia-backed Perplexity AI launched Comet, a web browser integrating AI-powered search and an agentic assistant capable of researching, summarising, comparing products, and managing tasks. Comet, currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers at $200 per month, enters a market dominated by Google Chrome, which holds a 68% global share.

Tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms are collectively budgeting about $325 billion for AI investments this year, much of which is expected to flow to Nvidia. The company’s chips are in such high demand that its market value has increased tenfold since early 2023, when it stood at about $400 billion.

After briefly exceeding $4 trillion Wednesday morning, Nvidia shares dipped slightly in afternoon trading to close around $163, keeping its valuation just below the milestone. The company is set to release its next quarterly earnings report on August 27.