Nvidia surpassed Microsoft and Apple to become the world's stock king, how many rich people has Huang created?

City Boundary

2024-06-19 15:11Posted on the official account of Beijing Municipality

Microsoft and Apple, after more than half a month of indomitable "market value resistance", the suspense was still ruthlessly revealed-Nvidia officially topped the throne of "global stock king".

At the close of the U.S. stock market on June 18, Nvidia rose 3.51%, with a total market capitalization of $3.34 trillion, surpassing Apple (3.29 trillion) and Microsoft (3.32 trillion) - since the end of 2022, Nvidia's stock price has increased more than 9 times.

A whale is born, and everything falls. As the "sole arms dealer" of the tech giant's AI war, Nvidia's stock price has soared by nearly 50% in the past month - and since the beginning of this year, it has siphoned off about 40% of the Nasdaq's rising market value.

At the same time as Nvidia reached the top, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla fell in unison, bowing to the new king.

▲（市值排名。 图源/App Economy Insights）

However, the more excited and anxious people in this feast are those who dare to gamble on Nvidia stock.

Someone has just entered the market, and investor Xueer said to "City Boundary": "The market value has peaked, which just means that NVIDIA's growth has not yet ended." She optimistically predicts that Nvidia has at least the next 10 years of upside, "and it can rise to at least $150 in the short term."

There are also people who are in their pockets. Investor Bobo sold a house at a high point last year, put a lot of cash into Nvidia, and played a heartbeat solidly. He was undoubtedly lucky, "after all, this is one of the few definite gains," he told the City Boundary.

A few days ago, Bobo sold all of Nvidia. He did not disclose how much this money was credited, but said lightly that he was ready to withdraw from the stock market from now on, and he was able to retire with peace of mind.

01, the new "king" is crowned

The market's expectation for Nvidia to reach the top has begun since the beginning of June. At that time, Nvidia surpassed Apple and became the second largest company in the world by market capitalization. Analysts have already given predictions: it is only a matter of time before Nvidia surpasses Microsoft.

The astonishing rise rate is the most amazing part of this wealth story.

In January 1999, Nvidia landed on the NASDAQ, and it took nearly 25 years for it to break through the trillion market value in June 2023. From 1 trillion to more than 2 trillion in March 2024, it took just over 9 months. On June 3, Nvidia's market value exceeded 3 trillion. This time, it took only 66 trading days.

After 3 trillion, only Apple and Microsoft are left in front of Nvidia. In the alternating rise in market capitalization, it took about two weeks for Nvidia to reach the top. Next, it needs to transcend only itself.

Whenever someone predicts whether Nvidia's stock price is overvalued, it will break the doubt with a new round of gains. In the near future, Huang's speech and customer platform will also become a positive for the market and turn into upward momentum.

The core of the frenzied stock price is the AI war of the technology giants, which has brought "an incredible number of orders" to Nvidia.

On May 23, Nvidia disclosed in the first quarter report of fiscal year 2025 that its total revenue in the first fiscal quarter was $24.69 billion, a year-on-year increase of 243.3%; Among them, the revenue of data center chip business for AI model training increased by 427% year-on-year to US$22.6 billion, accounting for about 86% of the overall revenue; Profit (EBIT) increased 439% year-over-year to $16.46 billion.

The strong demand has made Nvidia chips in short supply. According to official disclosure, its delivery cycle at the end of 2023 was once as long as 8~11 months. At the beginning of 2024, this number has dropped to 3~4 months, but it is still too long for giants who are racing against time to prepare for AI.

According to the estimation of "North Beta Capital", NVIDIA's H series GPU shipments in 2024 will be about 223~2.66 million pieces, and B series GPU shipments will be about 21~290,000 pieces. Recently, Microsoft placed an additional order for 120,000 servers, including 960,000 H100 and 320,000 B200; Meta placed orders for 350,000 pieces of H100 and 69,600 pieces of B200.

The above two have already accounted for more than half of Nvidia's supply - this does not include the orders of Google, Amazon, Oracle and other manufacturers.

There are also new players who are constantly coming down. On May 27, Musk announced that the large model company "xAI" he founded had completed a $6 billion Series B financing - most of this financing will flow into Nvidia's pocket.

▲ (Left - Jensen Huang, Right - Musk)

The latest product replacement is also adding new momentum to NVIDIA. In early June, Huang revealed that the latest data center chip, Blackwell, has already started production and is expected to launch the Blackwell Ultra AI chip in 2025, with the next-generation platform Rubin in development and will be released in 2026.

HSBC expects NVL servers alone to contribute $67 billion in revenue and drive data center revenue to $180 billion by fiscal 2026.

02, the person who stirred up Nvidia

To be crowned the "king of stocks", in addition to the continuous demand for chips from giants, the "faith" of small and medium-sized investors who continue to push up and take over for Nvidia has become the biggest driving force.

"Nvidia, I think it's going to be 1,000 (dollars per share)." In March this year, investor Yuki expressed confidence in the "city boundary". Her judgment was soon fulfilled, and on May 23, Nvidia's stock price broke $1,000 for the first time, and announced that it would complete the "1-for-10" stock starting from June 10.

▲ (Nvidia stock price trend.) Photo source/Straight Flush)

In December 2022, shortly after ChatGPT was unveiled, Yuki saw it and began to build a position on NVIDIA. Roughly calculated, starting with $170 at the time, Yuki earned nearly 500% of the gains.

Another investor, Lin Lu, also tasted Ganlin in the feast of Nvidia's stock price. He bought Nvidia in the first half of 2023 at a holding cost of $233 per share, earning several times the return.

In addition to the lucky outside investors, the most direct beneficiaries of the stock price surge are Nvidia's own executives and employees.

According to the data, as of March 25 this year, Huang held a total of 93.5 million shares of Nvidia stock, accounting for about 3.8% of the company's total outstanding shares. Based on this calculation, Huang's net worth after Nvidia's ascension to the top is about $126.5 billion.

Recently, Huang Jenxun chose to cash out a small amount and exchanged some "pocket money" for himself. According to Nvidia's official disclosure: On June 13 and 14, Huang Jenxun sold a total of 240,000 shares in two days, cashing out about $31.18 million (about 226 million yuan) - two "small targets", using only 2.5 thousandths of Huang's market capitalization wealth.

▲ (Jensen Huang shows off the Blackwell series of products)

was brought to the fire, as well as NVIDIA's hot offer.

Gao Shan, co-founder of the chip recruitment service agency "Yanfen.com", told "City Boundary": "The monthly salary of Nvidia fresh graduates this year is about 22-25k, with slight differences in positions of different backgrounds, and 400,000 yuan will be allotted in the month of entry." The stock will be issued in 4 years, and 100,000 yuan will be issued every year. Another person familiar with the matter added to the "City Boundary": "Nvidia will issue shares in the month when the employee joins the company. ”

In addition, Nvidia also allows employees to buy stocks at an 85% discount of 15% of their monthly salary, which is a lower threshold than for external investors.

This made many employees of Nvidia easily jump into the income threshold of one million per year. For example, Wang Huiying, who returned to China and joined the company in 2021, told "City Boundary" that as of March this year, the value of the first batch of shares he obtained had risen by about 3 times. Counting all kinds of benefits, two years after graduation, Wang Huiying's net assets have exceeded 2 million yuan.

03. How long can Nvidia rise?

0 Many people who have already made a lot of money on Nvidia are still not happy; Even more anxious, there are people who stood outside Nvidia and missed the first round of stock price express. They are more concerned about how long Nvidia can go up.

Huang himself probably knows better than anyone that the investment in chips by tech companies will always come to an end — that Nvidia cannot rely on a one-way engine for long.

However, recently, according to foreign media reports, Nvidia's greater sales growth space may be opening up - in early June, governments around the world began to increase investment in the field of AI. Many countries in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas have spent billions to tens of billions of dollars on the construction of new AI infrastructure.

In February, Huang spoke about the concept of "sovereign AI" at the World Government Summit in Dubai. According to NVIDIA's official news, the company has reached chip procurement intentions with the governments of Singapore, Japan, France, Italy, India and other countries.

According to Caijing magazine, "data non-export" is becoming an important red line for data regulation in the European Union, China and other countries or regions. In order to comply with data regulatory rules, enterprises will implement "sovereign AI", "sovereign cloud", and "national cloud" in local countries. They are all private clouds, and the data centers are built in the home country.

Recently, one of the countries that has invested the most here is Singapore. Singapore's National Supercomputing Center is reportedly being upgraded with Nvidia's latest AI chips. Singtel is also working with Nvidia to expand its data center footprint in Southeast Asia.

In May, Canada also pledged US$1.5 billion to consolidate state-owned computing power at the government level. Japan is also preparing to spend about US$740 million to develop its own AI computing capabilities. At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron called on Europe to establish a cooperative relationship and buy more GPU chips; By 2030-2035, increase Europe's share of processors used globally from the current 3% to 20%.

These country-level large-scale investments, short-term gains are directed to NVIDIA.

At the first quarter of 2024 earnings conference, Nvidia said: first-quarter revenue of $26 billion, nearly half of which came from large cloud computing companies using its chips. And "sovereign AI" is expected to bring in nearly $10 billion in revenue this year — last year, that figure was zero.

▲ (Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara County, California, USA)

In this wave of Nvidia's wealth, there is also one who may be the most gloomy disappointed.

Few people remember that Huang started his own business with Curtis Prim and Chris Malakowski. In 1999, Nvidia went public with a market capitalization of $1.1 billion. Two years later, Prim donated three-quarters of his 12.8 percent stake in Nvidia to the newly formed family foundation. Later, he explained that this was just for simple tax avoidance.

A few years later, Prim gradually moved away from work due to marital disputes, eventually leaving Nvidia in 2003 and emptying his stake in 2006.

According to foreign media reports, he has since lived a life of isolation and donated most of his wealth to his alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he has donated a total of $275 million since 2001, accounting for as much as 40% of the school's total donation. After Nvidia soared, Forbes estimated that Prim's current assets are about $30 million. Prim said his alma mater was his last safe haven.

And if he hadn't sold Nvidia, his fortune would have been close to $400 billion. Perhaps, he can donate more to his alma mater.

(Yuki in the article, Wang Huiying is a pseudonym)

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Edited by Li Yuan

Operation|Liu Shan

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