Nvidia Passes Apple to Become the World's Most Valuable Company - Powered by Demand for AI Chips

"Nvidia dethroned Apple as the world's most valuable company on Friday..." reports Reuters, "powered by insatiable demand for its specialized artificial intelligence chips." Nvidia's stock market value briefly touched $3.53 trillion, slightly above Apple's $3.52 trillion, LSEG data showed... In June, Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable company before it was overtaken by Microsoft and Apple. The tech trio's market capitalizations have been neck-and-neck for several months. [Friday] Microsoft's market value stood at $3.18 trillion, with its stock up 0.8%...

Nvidia's shares hit a record high on Tuesday, building on a rally from last week when TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted a forecast-beating 54% jump in quarterly profit driven by soaring demand for chips used in AI.
The article points out that by the end of the day Friday, Nvidia's valuation had dropped to $3.47 trillion, while Apple had risen to $3.52 trillion...

Let's be clear here

[rsilvergun]

The reason for the insane value is because everyone is expecting those chips to start replacing workers, particularly those in the 12 to $24 an hour range.

It's similar to when PCs started replacing Junior accountants only on a much much larger scale and without new forms of work to replace and absorb the job losses.

Hell sometime in the next 5 to 10 years we are going to have to figure out what to do with 7 million taxi and Uber drivers. Those waymos are all over Phoenix and San Francisco and they work. The only thing holding them back right now is getting enough miles and enough legal precedence that they can sort out The liability.

Basically it's an industrial revolution going on. Folks who yell Luddite every time this is brought up don't know the actual history of the two industrial revolutions. There was massive technological unemployment for decades following them until new tech, and a whole lot of dead people in two world wars, brought us back to some semblance of full employment. It also helped that we basically blew all of Europe to Kingdom come and it had to be rebuilt generating a ton of jobs...

The point is we are not equipped as a species to deal with what's coming. Too many centuries of, if you don't work you don't eat and we are suddenly going to have tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people who we just don't need to work.

What do you do when you've got 30 or 40 million people that you just don't have a use for? Traditionally some loudmouth comes along and gives them firearms and points them in the direction of whoever still has a job and money

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[backslashdot]

AI requires an avatar (robot, delivery drone, or car) to start "replacing" humans. Right now the world is about 100 to 150 years from a robot that can meaningfully replace humans for most tasks. When we start seeing (non-gimmick) human-less farms, deliveries, restaurants, or factories that's when we can start worrying from a policy standpoint. Right now, robots are really dumb and will remain so for, like I said, 100+ years. How many lights-out factories exist?

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[Tablizer]

It's similar to when PCs started replacing Junior accountants only on a much much larger scale and without new forms of work to replace and absorb the job losses.

They became Power-Point jockies, talking about synergy and growth acceleration strategies.

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[locater16]

You're giving investors too much credit. Half don't even know what Nvidia does, I'm not kidding [youtube.com]

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[smash]

yup, most "investors" these days are tech traders, line go up = good, line go down = bad, buy/sell based on stock price movements.

Nvidia is the greatest company-

[locater16]

-to be called Nvidia in the world

Distracted investors means

[Tablizer]

...great time to snap up Apple stock.

How can this be maintained?

[ctilsie242]

I'm not sure where we are on this cycle. Sometimes I think something is going to collapse, but then it just stays around or even grows for some unknown reason. AI is still a thing, but we have many people offering the same tools for the job, and supply is starting to outpace demand. When funding in the AI sector starts drying up, I'm expecting to see a lot of patent wars and people trying to claim a lot of things AI-based, similar to how the smartphone industry had all the patent litigation for years, th

Re:

[quintessencesluglord]

Have a theory this is a manifestation of wealth inequality (which is also a manifestation of inflation beyond money printer go brrrr, but that's a different idea).

So it works like this- every general thing of general value has already been snatched up, so if you are sitting on a mountain of money you need something to invest in. It doesn't even matter what it is, as long as you've covered every bet on the roulette wheel (and crowded out anyone else from making a bet), something will pay off.

So AI, crypto; i