Nvidia shares hit record high as chipmaker market cap surpasses $3.4 trillion

Nvidia Stocks headed for a record close on Monday as Wall Street prepares for earnings season and all of the chipmaker's top customers are updated on their planned spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

As of 1 p.m. Eastern Time, the stock was up 2.6% at $138.31. The previous highest closing price was on June 18th at $135.58. Shares are now up nearly 180% this year and have increased more than ninefold since the start of 2023.

Nvidia, widely seen as the company selling the picks and shovels for the AI ​​gold rush, has been the biggest beneficiary of the generative AI boom that began with the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022. Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) are used to build and deploy advanced AI models that power ChatGPT and similar applications.

Companies incl Microsoft, Meta, GoogleAnd Amazon are buying Nvidia GPUs in bulk to build ever-larger computing clusters for their advanced AI work. These companies are all expected to report their quarterly results by the end of October.

Of the billions of dollars that top technology companies spend annually on their AI developments, a large portion goes to Nvidia, which controls about 95% of the market for AI training and inference chips, according to analysts at Mizuho.

Nvidia's revenue has more than doubled in each of the last five quarters and at least tripled in three of those periods. Growth is expected to slow slightly for the rest of the year, with analysts forecasting growth of about 82% to $32.9 billion for the quarter ending in October, according to LSEG.

Nvidia recently said demand for its next-generation AI GPU called Blackwell is “insane” and it expects billions of dollars in fourth-quarter revenue from the new product.

With a market capitalization of $3.4 trillion, Nvidia is the second most valuable listed US company after him Apple at about $3.53 trillion.

REGARD: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Squawk Box