NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang gestures at the NVIDIA GTC Global AI Conference on March 17, 2026 in San Jose, California, USA.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Nvidia Shares closed at their highest level on Friday for the first time since October as investors rushed into AI chip deals ahead of the tech giant’s hyperscaler’s earnings next week, pushing the company’s market capitalization above $5 trillion.
The stock rose 4.3% to close at $208.27. Nvidia has risen more than 14x since the end of 2022, driven by a surge in demand for its artificial intelligence services and models. Nvidia’s graphics processing units are trusted by Google. microsoft, Meta and Amazon So are model developers OpenAI and Anthropic.
Friday’s gains were driven by chipmakers’ better-than-expected earnings late Thursday. inteluntil recently was largely left out of the AI market. Intel stock soared 24%, its best performance since 1987.
advanced micro deviceThe mobile device chip maker, which competes with Nvidia and Intel, soared 14%. Qualcomm It increased by 11%.
Investors were dumping large tech stocks as oil prices soared due to the Iran war and resulting supply chain disruptions. However, a wide range of technologies have recently become popular again, and the demand for AI infrastructure shows no signs of slowing down.
The Nasdaq rose 15% in April, heading for its best month since April 2020.
Nvidia faces increasing competition in the AI space. alphabeta major Nvidia customer, has announced a new chip that will attempt to compete with Nvidia’s offerings when it becomes available to cloud customers later this year.
WATCH: AMD likely to get the same gains as Intel
