US microchip maker Nvidia achieved the biggest one day increase in value of any company in history as investors clamour for a stake in the AI industry.
Shares in the Californian company surged 16.4pc in New York on Thursday, adding $277bn (£219bn) to its market value.
The rise eclipsed a $197bn gain made by Meta at the start of the month to become the biggest increase in value of a company during a single market trading session.
Nvidia, which is seen as a market leader in AI chips, is now worth $1.96 trillion.
The stock price leap came after Nvidia reported that its quarterly revenues had climbed 265pc to more than $22bn. Its full-year revenues more than doubled to $60bn.
On Wednesday night, chief executive Jensen Huang said he believed the world was at an AI “tipping point” and said demand for its microchips was “surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations”.
The US company has been designing high-powered graphics processing chips that are favoured by developers.
Tech giants and nation states have been buying up hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s most powerful H100 chips. The British government has made plans to buy thousands of the company’s processors to bolster its AI supercomputing capabilities.
Nvidia’s performance sparked a broader rally for tech shares and drove the S&P 500 index to a record high, up 2.1pc to 5,087.03.
Thursday’s share price gain made Nvidia the world’s third most valuable business, above Amazon and Google-owner Alphabet. It also inflated the net worth of Mr Huang, 61, to around $59.6bn, according to Bloomberg. That leaves the entrepreneur, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993, just outside the top 20 richest people in the world.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley said Nvidia’s growth continued to be “remarkable”, while predicting “AI usage will almost certainly continue to grow”. Nvidia said it would record revenues of $24bn in the next three months alone.
However, the rapid surge in technology stock values has prompted fears of a bubble fuelled by AI mania.
Richard Windsor, an independent analyst, said: “For better or for worse, Nvidia is stuck on this rollercoaster and there is no way for it to get off should the bubble burst.”
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