Nvidia closed with a market cap above $3.5 trillion for the first time on record, the second company in history to do so.
The stock pushed to new highs on Monday in anticipation of Big Tech -- and Tesla -- earnings. The stock closed at $143.71, up 4.1%, the highest closing level on record. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% and 0.8%, respectively.
Nvidia is the second company to reach the $3.5 trillion milestone. Apple first closed above $3.5 trillion on July 9. As of Monday, Apple had a market cap of $3.595 trillion.
Nvidia's recent rally started last week in response to a strong outlook given by chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and upbeat analyst research on demand for its Blackwell processors.
The next test for the company will be when Tesla, an important Nvidia customer, reports its earnings Wednesday evening. The electric-vehicle maker uses AI computing, relying on Nvidia graphics-processing units, to train both its driver assistance product and the humanoid robots that Tesla hopes to sell someday.
"What we are seeing is that the demand for Nvidia hardware is so high that it's often difficult to get the GPUs," said Tesla CEO Elon Musk on his company's second-quarter earnings conference call in July." "I'm quite concerned about actually being able to get GPUs when we want them."
About a month after that, Nvidia reported its second-quarter numbers. Sales came in at about $30 billion, better than the $28.7 billion analysts projected, according to FactSet. For the third quarter, management forecast sales of about $32 billion to $33 billion, a little better than the $31.4 billion Wall Street was projecting.
Results from other customers including Microsoft, Amazon.com, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms will also help investors project Nvidia's number. Capital spending at those companies represents sales for the AI-computing leader. Wall Street expects their combined capital spending to top $60 billion in the quarter ended in September, up 56% year over year.
The four companies represented more than 40% of Nvidia's revenue in the second quarter. Investors will want to see continued spending from the technology companies but will also need to keep an eye on how much emphasis they put on their in-house chip-making efforts.
On Monday, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland kept a Positive rating on the stock in a research note previewing semiconductor companies' earnings.
"For A.I., checks remain solid, and we expect hyperscaler capex revisions...That said, the bar has been raised for most A.I. stocks as prior guidance will likely need to be raised to support stock prices," Rolland wrote.
Among other chip makers, Advanced Micro Devices closed up 1.2% and Broadcom was up 0.6%.
