In a meteoric rise fueled by the AI boom, chip maker NVIDIA has overtaken Amazon and Google to become the world’s fourth most valuable public company.

On Wednesday, NVIDIA’s stock market capitalization soared to $1.83 trillion, narrowly eclipsing Alphabet’s $1.82 trillion valuation. This monumental achievement comes just a day after the semiconductor giant surpassed Amazon to claim the fourth spot on the global market cap leaderboard.

NVIDIA now trails only Microsoft ($3.04 trillion), Apple ($2.84 trillion), and Saudi Aramco in overall company value. The Santa Clara-based firm’s meteoric rise has been propelled by the unprecedented demand for its cutting-edge AI chips, which power many of the world’s most advanced language models and artificial intelligence projects.

At the heart of the AI revolution

NVIDIA’s H100 chip has become the workhorse of the AI industry, driving a significant portion of the large language models (LLMs) currently in use. From OpenAI‘s ground-breaking ChatGPT to the AI initiatives of tech titans like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon, the H100 has become the de facto standard for powering the AI revolution.

Ironically, as Bloomberg reports, NVIDIA’s top sales of AI chips come from these very same tech giants that it has now surpassed in market value. The company’s virtual monopoly on advanced AI hardware has positioned it as a critical supplier to the world’s largest technology companies, all of which are engaged in an AI chip arms race to develop their own custom silicon that could potentially rival NVIDIA’s dominance.

The next generation of AI hardware

NVIDIA is not resting on its laurels. The company is poised to release the H200, a superior AI chip with even more memory capacity and bandwidth than its predecessor. This next-generation hardware promises to further solidify NVIDIA’s position as the preeminent force in AI hardware.

Meanwhile, direct competitors like Intel and AMD are working furiously to develop their own powerful chips that could eventually challenge the H200’s supremacy. However, NVIDIA has taken a clever strategic approach that could allow it to capitalize on the AI chip race, even if it loses its monopoly.

Hedging its bets in the AI chip wars

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that NVIDIA has invested a staggering $30 billion into a dedicated unit aimed at assisting other companies in designing and manufacturing their own custom AI chips. This move means that even if technology giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon succeed in developing their own AI silicon, NVIDIA could still profit by providing its expertise and resources to support these in-house chip initiatives.