Chipmaker Nvidia became the first public company in history to scale a $4tn market value on Wednesday as its stock price continues a years-long stratospheric rise.
Shares of the top chip designer rose roughly 2.4% to $164, benefiting from the ongoing surge in demand for artificial intelligence technologies. Nvidia’s chips and associated software are considered world leaders for building artificial intelligence products.
Nvidia achieved a $1tn market value for the first time back in June 2023 and the surge continued unabated with its market value – the total value of its shares – more than tripling in about a year, faster than Apple and Microsoft, the only other US firms with a market value of more than $3tn. Apple was the first company to reach a valuation of $3tn, back in 2022.
That’s not how capitalism works at all. Companies are spending money on AI because they need to compete against other companies. You might not like it for all the very good reasons you gave, but consumers are using AI so companies are trying to provide it. In the absence of competition, companies do not spend money chasing risky new revenue streams but milk their existing base.
If there was only Microsoft, and no other software company on the planet, Microsoft would not spend money on AI because they wouldn’t need to.
A big part of Marx’s criticism of capitalism is the waste it creates through duplication of effort.