The stock price of AI and gaming chip manufacturer Nvidia (NVDA) surged past $1,235 on Wednesday, up 14.2% for the day, bringing the company's market capitalization to $3.01 trillion, according to Yahoo! Finance. If the trend holds, Nvidia will be the second most valuable publicly traded company, leapfrogging iPhone maker Apple (AAPL).

Nvidia—which has seen its stock skyrocket more than 150% so far this year—began the week trading at $1,125 on Monday before rising 9.78% on Wednesday. Apple is trading at $195.87, up 0.78% for the day.

The only other company in the $3 trillion club is Microsoft (MSFT), which has long held the top spot at $3.15 trillion and is trading at $424.01.

By comparison, the entire cryptocurrency marketplace has a market capitalization of $2.8 trillion, according to CoinGecko.

The Decrypt Emerge 2023 company of the year, Nvidia has charged headlong into artificial intelligence, including hardware, software, and robotics.

In February, the market cap of the global chipmaker flipped cloud computing and e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) when Nvidia hit $1.78 trillion, compared to Amazon’s $1.75 trillion at the time. Later that month, Nvidia reported $22.1 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2024.

“Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said at the time. “Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries, and nations.”

In March, Nvidia unveiled their new Blackwell AI GPU, as well as Project Gr00t—aimed at advancing humanoid robotics and AI—and a limited integration with Apple's Vision Pro.

Reaction to the news of Nvidia’s new $3 trillion market cap was swift, with many—like Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunasa—putting the giant numbers into perspective.

Others noted that Nvidia's success was remarkable, because it primarily provides products and services to other companies rather than directly to consumers.

Among Nvidia's more prominent investors is U.S Rep. and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose investment in Nvidia has so far netted her $4 million, according to Unusual Whales.

“[Pelosi] is up over 210% in 197 days and [has] still not sold her calls,” Unusual Whales wrote. “Pelosi has made twenty times her salary. Her portfolio is near all-time highs, up 93%.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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