Nvidia is on the verge of becoming the first company in history to hit a $5 trillion market valuation, after its shares surged on the back of record-breaking AI chip orders and fresh commitments to the U.S. government.
The Santa Clara-based chipmaker’s stock climbed nearly 5% in premarket trading on Wednesday, briefly touching $4.94 trillion before settling around $4.89 trillion in market value.
The rally followed Chief Executive Jensen Huang’s announcement of $500 billion in AI chip bookings and plans to build seven new supercomputers for the U.S. government.
Speaking at Nvidia’s developer conference in Washington, Huang disclosed that one of the supercomputers will be developed in partnership with Oracle and powered by 100,000 of Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chips.
The firm also confirmed a $100 billion partnership with OpenAI to develop GPU supercomputers and a $2 billion equity investment in Elon Musk’s xAI.
Nvidia’s transformation from a niche graphics card maker into the backbone of the artificial intelligence ecosystem has been commendable. The company now sits ahead of Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet in valuation growth.
“In many ways, everything that could have gone right for the firm, has gone right over the last sort of 24 hours,” said Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone.
For its fiscal second quarter of 2026, Nvidia reported revenue of $46.7 billion, a 56% increase year-on-year, with data-centre GPUs accounting for 88% of sales. The company’s stock added roughly $230 billion in value within a single day, illustrating its market-moving power.
Analysts, however, warn that Nvidia’s valuation, trading at about 50 times forward earnings, leaves little room for error. Given its dominant weighting in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, any major price movement could send ripples through pension funds, ETFs, and technology portfolios across global markets.
Beyond the markets, Nvidia has also become an important player in U.S.–China technology diplomacy. Its Blackwell processors are at the heart of Washington’s export restrictions, aimed at limiting China’s access to advanced AI computing systems. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he might raise the issue of the high-end chips when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping.
To remain compliant with these export rules, Nvidia is designing modified versions of its chips for overseas markets, a strategy to sustain demand while scaling through geopolitical pressure. This could ultimately speed up the $5 trillion valuation reach for Nvidia.
