Nvidia has started the $5 trillion club. A look at its rise, by the numbers
By Associated Press
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang speaks on how AI infrastructure and AI factories that generate intelligence at scale are powering a new industrial revolution, at Washington Convention Center, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.
Nvidia’s journey to be one of the world’s most prominent companies has produced some eye-popping numbers. Here’s a look.
$5.054 trillion
Nvidia’s total market capitalization as of the open of trading Wednesday, tops in the S&P 500.
As of the close of trading Tuesday, Microsoft ($4.04 trillion) and Apple ($3.99 trillion) were next among the most valuable companies in the S&P 500.
79
The number of trading days it took for Nvidia’s market cap to grow from $4 trillion to $5 trillion. The market cap had jumped from $3 trillion on May 13, to $4 trillion on July 9 (41 trading days), although Nvidia had crossed and fallen back below the $3 trillion threshold a number of times between June 2024 and May 2025 before making the run to $4 trillion.
18.6%
The company’s contribution to the gain in the S&:P 500 this year as of Sept. 30, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Nvidia shares gained 39% in the first nine months of the year.
$178.9 billion
The net worth of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to Forbes, putting him eighth on its Real-Time Billionaires List. Elon Musk is No. 1 at $499.4 billion.
$4.28 trillion
The gross domestic product of Japan, the world’s fourth largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.
$24.2 billion
The amount of money Nvidia said it returned to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividends in the first half of fiscal 2026.
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
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