Nvidia passes Apple as world’s most valuable company
NVIDIA founder, President and CEO Jensen Huang speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2024.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Nvidia passed Apple in market cap on Tuesday becoming, for a second time, the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Nvidia rose nearly 3% to close with a market cap of $3.43 trillion, ahead of Apple at $3.4 trillion. Nvidia shares have almost tripled in 2024, as investors show continued confidence in the company’s ability to maintain a rapid growth rate from its graphics processing units, or GPUs, and a leadership position in the artificial intelligence market.
Apple shares are up about 17% this year, although many analysts say the recent release of the Apple Intelligence suite of features for iPhones could drive increased sales and put the company in a leadership position in “edge AI,” which relies less on GPU-based servers.
Nvidia is the dominant supplier of GPUs, which are used to develop and deploy advanced AI software such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Its stock is now up more than 2,700% in the past five years, and revenue has more than doubled in each of the past five quarters, tripling in three of them.
Apple was the first company to reach a $1 trillion and a $2 trillion market cap. Nvidia previously passed Apple in June before sliding over the summer. Microsoft, ranked third with a market cap of close to $3.1 trillion, is a major customer of Nvidia GPUs to fuel its partnership with OpenAI as well as its own AI ambitions.
Founded in 1991 to produce chips for playing 3D games, Nvidia has taken off in recent years for a very different reason. Over the past decade, scientists and researchers discovered that the same Nvidia chip designs that could render polygons and computer graphics were ideal for the kind of parallel processing needed for AI. Nvidia then developed software and more powerful chips specifically for AI.
Last week, Apple reported a 6% increase in revenue for the most-recent quarter but signaled weaker growth than analysts expected in the current period. Nvidia is scheduled to report results Nov. 20.
S&P Dow Jones announced last week that Nvidia will join the Dow Industrial Average on Friday, replacing longtime rival Intel, and joining Apple in the blue-chip index.
An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation flies near the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.
Roselle Chen | Reuters
Air taxi maker Joby Aviation in a new lawsuit accused competitor Archer Aviation of using stolen information by a former employee to “one-up” a partnership deal with a real estate developer.
“This is corporate espionage, planned and premeditated,” Joby said in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California Superior Court in Santa Cruz, where the company is based.
Archer and Joby did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The lawsuit alleges that former U.S. state and local policy lead, George Kivork, downloaded dozens of files and sent some content to his personal email two days before he resigned in July to take a job at Archer, which had recruited him.
By August, Joby said a partner that worked with Kivork said it had been approached by Archer with a “more lucrative deal.” Joby alleges that the eVTOL rival’s understanding of “highly confidential” details helped it leverage negotiations.
Joby also said the developer attempted to terminate the agreement, citing a breach of confidentiality.
Kivork refused to return the files when Joby approached him after conducting an investigation, according to the suit. The company also said Archer denied wrongdoing, and would not disclose how it learned about the terms of the agreement or provide results from an internal investigation it allegedly undertook.
The lawsuit comes during a busy period for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology as companies race to gain Federal Aviation Administration certification to start flying commercially. ‘
The sector has also benefitted from President Donald Trump‘s newly minted eVTOL pilot program.
Joby argued in the complaint that it’s “imperative” to protect Joby’s work “from this type of espionage” to promote the sector’s success and ensure fair competition.
Last week, Joby said it completed its first test flight for a hybrid aircraft it’s working on with defense contractor L3Harris. This month, Amazon-backed Beta Technologies, another electric flight company, also went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Joby shares have more than doubled over the last year, while Archer is up about 68%.
In August 2023, Archer settled a previous legal dispute with Boeing-owned Wisk Aero over the alleged theft of trade secrets. As part of the deal, Archer agreed to use Wisk as its autonomous tech partner.
A hearing is scheduled for March 20, 2026.
Joby and Archer year-to-date stock chart.
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