Apple has been knocked off its second most valuable company in the world perch by none other than the AI craze. The revenue boost that NVIDIA got from selling something that is still called GPU but is actually a chip tailored to make AI calculations, has been so significant, that its market capitalization has now broken the $3 trillion mark.
On May 22, NVIDIA reported a revenue of $26.0 billion, an 18% from Q4, and the whopping 262% boost year-on-year. The AI craze brought NVIDIA $60.92 billion in revenue for last year, a 125% increase, too.
Revenue is one thing, but actual profit is an even rosier story, as NVIDIA logged a breathtaking 629% profit per share increase year-on-year. In short, everyone is buying AI chips, and NVIDIA is making out like a bandit, pushing its stock price to unforeseen heights.
“The next industrial revolution has begun – companies and countries are partnering with NVIDIA to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centers to accelerated computing and build a new type of data center – AI factories – to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence,” waxed poetic Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA:
AI will bring significant productivity gains to nearly every industry and help companies be more cost- and energy-efficient, while expanding revenue opportunities.
Apple is a latecomer to the AI push sweeping the industry, and is only expected to unveil its take on the AI-powered iPhone with the iOS 18 that will be detailed during the WWDC expo this month.
We will then have to wait and see how it will be implemented in the iPhone 16 series, as all rumors point to a practical approach that will run AI calculations only where it makes sense from a user-centric point of view.
Samsung, Oppo, and other phone makers have already announced and even implemented their AI pivots, so Apple is playing catching up here, and it showed when NVIDIA slotted just behind Microsoft for the world’s most valuable company title, pushing the team hailing from Cupertino to a third place now.
Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he’s keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.