No company has ever been worth $6 trillion, and Nvidia is closer than anyone has been.
The stock rose as much as 4.7% Thursday to $236.47, adding more than $900 billion to its market cap in a single week, per Bloomberg. Over the last seven days, the rally is up 20%.
What's Driving This
The same thing that's been driving Nvidia for two years: hyperscalers spending whatever it costs on AI.
Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet are pouring billions into capex - the budget line for buildings, servers, and chips - largely to fund their AI buildouts, and that money flows to Nvidia first.
It also helps that Nvidia first crossed $5 trillion in market cap less than a month ago, on April 24, which means the trip from $5 trillion to "closing in on $6 trillion" took three weeks.
For context: the stock is up more than 14-fold since the end of 2022, while the S&P 500 is up about 90% over the same stretch.
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The Beijing Wildcard
The rally is happening at an odd moment, with CEO Jensen Huang in Beijing alongside Trump, Tim Cook, and Elon Musk for a US-China summit.
Reuters reported Thursday that Washington had cleared sales of Nvidia's H200 chip to around 10 Chinese tech firms - the first apparent loosening of export controls in months - though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the report was "news to me" when asked live on CNBC.
If that channel actually opens, it adds a market Nvidia has been mostly locked out of. If it doesn't, the stock priced in something that isn't coming.
Huang himself called the summit "one of the most important [in] human history," and declined questions about chip sales.
What To Watch
Earnings hit on May 20, which is the next real test of whether the math behind a $6 trillion valuation holds.
Until then, two things matter - whether Washington confirms or walks back the H200 story, and whether hyperscalers raise AI capex numbers in the next round of earnings.
The biggest market cap in history is still six days away from a number that will either back it up or unwind it.
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