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• June 2025, Nvidia became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, reaching a £2.7 trillion market cap and surpassing Microsoft for the first time.
• This shift highlighted the central role of artificial intelligence and semiconductor infrastructure in defining global brand strength and economic value.

The Day Nvidia Took the Lead

On June 3rd, 2025, Nvidia’s stock climbed by 3% during regular trading hours, closing at £110.50. That single-day movement was enough to push its total valuation above Microsoft’s, setting Nvidia’s market cap at £2.7 trillion, while Microsoft stood just below at £2.69 trillion.

The financial community watched closely. Traders on Wall Street had already priced in strong quarterly numbers, but this valuation milestone still surprised many. It was the first time in history that a chip company had become the world’s most valuable public company, surpassing software firms, e-commerce giants, and cloud providers.

Nvidia’s rise didn’t come out of nowhere. It had been coming for months, if not years. Each quarterly report, each hardware release, and every AI partnership added to the climb.

A Decade of Preparation Behind the Overnight Win

Understanding this milestone helps us go back a few years. Nvidia had already become a household name in gaming and high-performance computing. But its breakthrough in artificial intelligence accelerated its relevance beyond consumer tech.

Between 2018 and 2022, the company invested heavily in CUDA, its proprietary computing architecture. CUDA allowed developers to write AI code optimised specifically for Nvidia hardware. This strategic move made Nvidia’s chips essential for many applications beyond gaming.

In 2023 and 2024, Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) became the go-to chips for training AI models. From ChatGPT to large-scale enterprise platforms, companies relied on Nvidia’s hardware to run the most demanding machine learning tasks.

As of Q1 2025, Nvidia reported quarterly revenue of $44.1 billion (£34.6 billion), a 69% increase from the year before. Its data centre business alone brought in $39.1 billion (£30.7 billion), up 73% year over year.

Its gaming division still contributes, but today over 70% of Nvidia’s revenue comes from data centres, AI chips, and high-performance cloud computing infrastructure.

Why the AI Boom Made All the Difference

There’s a reason AI companies—from Microsoft and Google to startups and research labs—turned to Nvidia. The company holds over 80% of the market share for high-end AI chips. While competitors have started to emerge, no one has caught up.

Its flagship H100 and newer Blackwell architecture chips are behind some of the biggest AI advancements. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Oracle rent out these GPUs by the thousands. Training one large language model can require tens of thousands of them.

The demand has been near insatiable. Nvidia’s fiscal Q1 2025 earnings call projected further supply constraints due to backorders. Customers placed forward orders worth billions. The company responded by ramping up production capacity in Taiwan and investing in a new facility in Arizona.

Beyond hardware, Nvidia’s software platforms like CUDA, cuDNN, and Triton Inference Server make it easier for developers to scale their AI products. Few competitors offer this level of integration between chips and code.

Leadership and Vision at the Helm

CEO Jensen Huang has become one of the most recognised figures in global business. Known for his leather jackets and keynote addresses that regularly trend online, Huang’s approach has been deliberate and expansive.

He emphasised early on that wasn’t just a chip company. It was an infrastructure player, offering a full-stack solution that included hardware, software, and cloud services. That messaging landed with customers who were looking for stability and scale as AI workloads became more complex.

In late 2024, Huang expressed concern about the potential long-term effects of US export restrictions on advanced AI chips to China. Nvidia anticipated losing up to $8 billion (£6.3 billion) in annual revenue due to those limits, but it adjusted production to focus on markets in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Despite the geopolitical hurdles, Nvidia managed to maintain growth in other markets. It signed multi-year supply agreements with hyperscalers and announced a series of AI research partnerships in the EU and India.

The Markets React

After its strong Q1 report on May 28, Nvidia’s stock surged by 24% over the following month. For investors, this confirmed what many suspected: Nvidia had become the single most important tech supplier of the post-cloud era.

Even broader indexes responded. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF rose more than 2% that week, while trading volume on Nvidia shares surpassed that of Apple and Microsoft combined on multiple days in early June.

Retail traders and institutional investors alike started looking at Nvidia as a cornerstone holding, not just a growth stock. Market analysts noted that Nvidia was now seen as a tech utility, rather than a speculative investment.

In parallel, Nvidia’s P/E ratio—once considered sky-high—began to seem reasonable against its earnings trajectory. Its Q1 net income rose 26% year over year to $18.8 billion (£14.7 billion).

What This Means for Global Brand Power

Microsoft, which had held the top spot until early June, remains a dominant force in AI through its partnerships with OpenAI and its Azure platform. But brand value today is increasingly shaped by supply chains, real-time demand, and technical infrastructure.

Nvidia, with fewer consumer-facing products, built its influence by enabling others. Its brand strength comes not from advertising but from indispensability. When every major tech firm depends on your chips, your brand becomes part of the global fabric.

At £2.7 trillion, Nvidia has reached a level once thought reserved only for platform companies and operating system monopolies. And it’s done so with a model built around hardware, scale, and strategic restraint.

The company’s next steps include shipping its next-generation Blackwell chips in Q3 2025, expanding its AI cloud offerings, and growing its presence in international markets. Investors will be watching closely to see if Nvidia can hold the top spot—or if this is just a moment before the next giant claims the crown.