For more than a decade, with only few interruptions, Apple held the title of the world's most valuable company, becoming the first to top $3 trillion in market cap — mostly due to the iPhone, a device millions of investors use daily. Recently, Apple was overtaken by Microsoft and this week there's was new king of Wall Street — once again a Bay Area company: Nvidia, which makes semiconductors in high demand for artificial intelligence applications.
Its annual revenue shot up more than 50% to $16.7 billion in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2021. The company's cloud computing platform also grew as customers relied on the networks to handle the shift to remote work. Nvidia's stock topped $19 a share in August 2022 before coming back to earth and trading below $12 later in the year as the pandemic waned.