Nvidia surpasses $4 trillion: first official market close record, amid AI and (over?)valuation

Nvidia surpasses $4 trillion in market capitalization: the AI boom redefines the hierarchy of global financial markets.

On July 9, 2025, Nvidia marked a historic turning point by reaching and maintaining for several hours a market capitalization above $4 trillion. This is a threshold never before consolidated so decisively by any company in the AI and semiconductor sector, placing Nvidia in an unprecedented position among the world’s big tech giants. The result was achieved after an impressive growth trajectory, driven by explosive demand for GPU and NPU chips for data centers, cloud, hyperscalers, and next-generation AI solutions.

Nvidia’s ascent was not merely a speculative run: market confidence is grounded in consistently improving quarterly results, strategic partnerships with all major technology players, and a product pipeline that includes the new Blackwell family and Rubin projects already expected for 2027. Investors see Nvidia not just as the privileged supplier of the “AI revolution,” but also as the architect of an unrivaled hardware and software ecosystem, capable of dominating every segment that requires computing power.

The impact of reaching the $4 trillion milestone is felt immediately across global indices: the main ETFs and passive funds must adjust their weightings, increasing Nvidia’s impact on overall market performance. Never before has a company focused exclusively on semiconductors and AI managed to equal (and surpass) giants like Apple and Microsoft in financial weight. Nvidia’s achieved market cap is not just a numerical record, but a signal that the market is now systematically betting on AI as the engine of global economic growth for the next decade.

Reinforcing this perception is the public narrative: analysts, CEOs, and the media have already begun to speak of Nvidia as the “beating heart of AI,” the new hub around which investments, innovation, and strategies of the world’s major tech companies and leading financial institutions now revolve.

Historic capitalization records: the companies that made financial market history

Over the past two decades, the race for capitalization records has seen companies from various sectors alternate, each in its own way symbolizing a phase of economic transformation. From oil giants to Silicon Valley’s big tech, every new milestone reached—the first trillion, then two, three, and finally four—reflected an industrial or technological turning point that redefined the priorities of global investors.

In 2007, PetroChina was the first company to briefly approach the trillion-dollar mark, thanks to a combination of record IPO and speculative rush on the Shanghai market. A few years later, Apple became the first U.S. company to close a trading day above a trillion: it was 2018, and the iPhone, together with digital services and buybacks, pushed Cupertino to levels never seen before. In quick succession came Microsoft, Amazon, Saudi Aramco, and Alphabet, each surpassing the symbolic threshold thanks to revolutionary products, cloud strategies, or the driving effect of energy commodities.

Over time, each new barrier has become less symbolic and more competitive: Apple and Microsoft have led the race to two and three trillion, while Tesla and Meta have shown that even different sectors like electric vehicles and social networks could aspire to multi-billion-dollar capitalizations. In 2023, Nvidia entered the trillion-dollar club for the first time, but it was only in 2025 that the AI chip company redefined the very concept of records, reaching—and consolidating—the $4 trillion threshold.

This progression of milestones tells not only the evolution of market value but the structural transformation of the global economy: today, a company can become the “queen of the markets” thanks to innovation in semiconductors, cloud AI, electric cars, or digital services, in an increasingly open challenge between business models and technological visions.

How market cap and share value are calculated: the math behind financial records

Market capitalization, or market cap, is the key measure used to assess the “weight” of a publicly traded company. The calculation is extremely simple in form but crucial in impact: just multiply the number of outstanding shares by the current market price of each share. This value immediately provides a snapshot of the company’s financial size in the eyes of global investors.

To reach historic milestones like $4 trillion in capitalization, two factors are crucial: the continuous increase in share price (driven by earnings, innovation, or future expectations) and the breadth of the float, i.e., the total number of shares issued and freely tradable. For Nvidia, for example, the formula behind the latest record was the multiplication of a price above $162 per share by about 24.65 billion shares outstanding.

Practically, the data needed to calculate market cap and per-share value are easily accessible on the most popular financial platforms such as Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, and in official SEC documents (10-K and 10-Q). This allows any investor or analyst to verify in real time a company’s position relative to the symbolic thresholds of global finance and to quickly compare the size of giants like Nvidia, Apple, or Microsoft.

Book value per share and market price: two worlds that rarely coincide in big tech

In the modern financial landscape, the book value per share represents the share of equity that, theoretically, would go to each shareholder if the company were liquidated today. It is calculated by dividing total equity (assets minus liabilities) by the number of shares outstanding. For a company like Nvidia, this value currently stands at around $2.23 per share, while the market price far exceeds $160.

This impressive gap is not an anomaly in the tech world: companies operating in high-growth sectors with high future prospects, like Nvidia, are regularly valued by the markets much more than their tangible assets. Investors are betting on the company’s ability to generate profits, innovation, and leadership for many years, accepting price multiples over book value that would be unthinkable in more mature or traditional sectors.

The ratio between market price and book value (the so-called “P/B ratio”) for Nvidia now approaches 70: a multiple that, on the one hand, signals a historically high valuation, but on the other, also captures the exceptional optimism the market places in the future centrality of semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Being able to read this difference is essential for anyone investing in or analyzing big tech trends in the new AI cycle.

Risk of overvaluation and selling strategies: how to evaluate Nvidia at these levels

When a company like Nvidia trades at extremely high market multiples compared to its book value or earnings, the question of possible overvaluation becomes inevitable. The price-to-book ratio above 70 and a price-to-earnings (P/E) among the highest in the sector show that investors are paying record amounts for the promise of future gains driven by artificial intelligence, more than for current fundamentals.

Those holding Nvidia shares today face a strategic crossroads. On the one hand, those who invested early and believe in the growing centrality of AI might decide to hold their position, convinced the company will continue to lead innovation in data centers and high-performance chips. On the other hand, those with a very high exposure to the stock or who entered recently might consider a partial or total sale, especially to mitigate the risk of a sharp correction in case of disappointing future earnings, a slowdown in AI investments, or the entry of strong new competitors in the sector.

The final evaluation therefore depends on the investor’s time horizon, risk tolerance, and average purchase price. In such a dynamic market context driven by sky-high expectations, prudence in portfolio management and diversification remain fundamental tools to avoid being caught off guard in the event of a trend reversal.

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