Ronaldo, Messi or Pelé? Federer, Nadal or Djokovic? We already knew the infernal debates about the “greatest of all time” in many popular sports. On Wall Street, three stocks are now claiming the title. Until last year, no one disputed Apple’s dominance simply from the point of view of stock market value. The Apple group was the first, in June 2023, to reach $3,000 billion in capitalization. But ChatGPT has been there… The most popular chatbot of the moment, supported by Microsoft, has thus boosted the value of the Redmond software giant, which in turn exceeded 3,000 billion dollars in January of this year, becoming at the same time the first capitalization in the world. Nvidia then entered the battle, driven by the incredible demand for chips intended for AI, a market on which its domination is indisputable and its lead recognized.
At the beginning of the month, Nvidia in turn crossed the $3,000 billion market value. Its stock market performance, for a technological “megacap”, is dazzling. Since the start of the year, the value has climbed by more than 160%! It even tripled over 12 months, while at the same time, Apple grew “only” by 16% and Microsoft by 31%.
The three files are in a pocket handkerchief for the first step of the market capitalization podium. Apple has just narrowly regained its first place this week, with a capitalization of around $3,290 billion following the announcement of its plans in artificial intelligence and its OpenAI partnership, compared to $3,280 billion for Microsoft. and $3.190 billion for Nvidia. If the graphics processor and AI giant manages to continue its stock market outperformance, it could in turn take first place. This could even happen very quickly, since the capitalization gap with Microsoft and Apple is now only 3%!
To put things in perspective, let’s remember that at the peak of the Internet bubble in 2000, the largest capitalizations of the time did not exceed $600 billion. In March 2000, Cisco, the “shovel dealer” then with the largest capitalization on Wall Street, weighed around 550 billion dollars, compared to around 520 billion dollars for Microsoft (peak of 600 billion in December 1999) and 470 billion for Intel (which will reach its peak in August at more than 500 billion). Cisco and Intel have never returned to their valuation peaks at the time.
