After Reclaiming ‘World’s Most Valuable Company’ Crown, Nvidia Gilds the Tiara

Nvidia has been at the heart of some dramatic market shifts this year. First, there was the DeepSeek scare: when the Chinese company released a highly successful chatbot that sent US stocks tied to AI reeling. Then, concerns about tariffs and international conflict spurred investors toward defensive positions and away from anything suggesting risk.

What does the tech giant have to show for its trouble? Reclaiming the title of most valuable public company in the world on Wednesday and seeing its shares keep rising after the re-crowning achievement.

Let the Chips Fall Where They May

The tariff temperature has gone from near-boiling to lukewarm. Same with Middle East tensions. 

In the past month, Nvidia shares have surged 18%, more than the rest of the Magnificent Seven, including Microsoft, from whom it recaptured the title of world’s most valuable company on Wednesday after ceding it in March. Microsoft, which is up 10.5% in the past month, has a $3.7 trillion market cap as of Thursday, compared with Nvidia’s $3.8 trillion. The chipmaker has been helped enormously by its Magnificent 7 compatriots, which continue to pump billions into AI investments: Microsoft, Facebook-owner Meta, Google-owner Alphabet and Amazon collectively represent 40% of Nvidia’s revenue, according to supply chain data collected by Bloomberg. As if to underscore Nvidia’s comeback, Thursday saw a setback for DeepSeek:

• The Information reported Thursday that DeepSeek’s upcoming, next-generation large language model, R2, may stumble in China because of a shortage of Nvidia chips that was accelerated by the US banning exports of the company’s H20 chips.
• DeepSeek hasn’t set a release date for R2 yet, but it would face major adoption hurdles with Chinese cloud providers experiencing a prolonged hardware shortage. Relying on domestic alternatives like Huawei chips might end up stalling R2’s performance since DeepSeek’s software has been so closely tied to the H20, which was designed for the Chinese market.

Do the Golden Wave: Nvidia’s 4.3% gain Wednesday was followed by another 0.5% on Thursday, and Wall Street analysts are bullish on the stock now that risk obstacles are seemingly cleared away. Loop Capital, which hiked its target price for the company from $170 to $250, wrote in a note Wednesday that “we are entering the next ‘Golden Wave’ of Gen AI adoption and NVDA is at the front end.”