This Friday, the chip giant Nvidia briefly ceded its title as the world’s largest market capitalization to Apple, a first since May 2025, under pressure from a selling wave hitting semiconductors on Wall Street.
Nvidia’s valuation stood at around $4.93 trillion around 3:00 PM GMT, its stock down more than 1.76%.
Apple, for its part, had about $4.89 trillion in market capitalization, after having surpassed $4.9 trillion at the very start of the session.
Since a mid-May peak, the Santa Clara (California)-based group has seen its stock fall by more than 13%.
Investors oscillate between enthusiasm about the AI revolution and the fear that the rally may fizzle or that the sector’s massive investments could be overstated.
Yet Nvidia’s unprecedented surge began almost exactly with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. The ensuing wave has multiplied its valuation on Wall Street by more than twelve.
King of GPUs, these processors considered among the most powerful for AI development, the company relies largely on accelerated construction of data centers to support demand for its products.
Overall, Wall Street seems increasingly nervous about anything tech-related.
For a long time dominant in the market for the most advanced AI chips, Nvidia is also seeing competition gain ground, such as the American AMD.
Many players are now positioning themselves in the so-called inference field, that is, the use of generative AI, which requires chips with more targeted capabilities than during the development phase of AI models.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, has thus developed its Trainium processors, while Google, another cloud giant, has its TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), both encroaching on a portion of the AI market.
