Nvidia's stock price is soaring, the market capitalization is approaching Apple, and the world's most valuable company may change hands!

Nvidia (NVDA.O) shares closed at an all-time high. The company's shares rose 2.4% to $138.07, while the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.9%. On Monday, Nvidia's stock price reached a high of $139.60.

Nvidia's previous highest closing price was $135.58, a record after Nvidia implemented a 10-share split on June 18. Two days later, it was the highest intraday price It touched $140.76.

The chip design company may soon surpass iPhone maker Apple (AAPL.O) to become the most valuable company in the world. As of Monday's close, Nvidia's market capitalization was $3.4 trillion, slightly less than Apple's $3.5 trillion market cap.

Nvidia's stock soared 179% this year, benefiting from the explosion in demand for artificial intelligence and the company's advanced semiconductors. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index each rose 23% over the same period. Nvidia shares have risen nearly 14% so far this month.

Nvidia reported sales of $30 billion in the June quarter, up 122% year over year. Although some analysts think the AI hype may have gone too far, most analysts are bullish on the stock. Of the 65 analysts covered by Nvidia, 93% gave a buy or equivalent rating, according to FactSet data.

When asked if the current boom will continue or will it be like the internet bubble 25 years ago, Nvidia CEO Hwang In-hoon said the AI infrastructure is still in its early stages.

“The entire computing technology architecture is being reinvented,” he said on Sunday's BG2pod podcast. “We have a trillion-dollar data center that needs to be modernized. ”

Hwang In-hoon also said that the $1 trillion invested in global data center infrastructure will eventually shift from traditional server central processing units (CPUs) to graphics processing units (GPUs) because GPUs are better suited to handle AI workloads Parallel computation. He added that in the current trillion-dollar transformation process, the industry has invested about 150 billion US dollars, and this transformation will be completed within the next four to five years.

Melius analyst Ben Reitz reiterated his buy rating for the stock earlier on Monday and said he remains conservative with Nvidia's $165 price target and that Nvidia will maintain its competitive edge in the long run.

Wrights wrote in the research report: “Nvidia's greatest achievement is to create an infrastructure that can run on both large cloud computing platforms and run on small-scale platforms, and can be profitable as quickly as possible. ”

He also pointed out that Nvidia is a very efficient company, and the scale of its profits will continue to please investors. Wrights mentioned that Nvidia earns $4.1 million per employee, compared to $2.3 million for Apple and $2.4 million for the Meta Platforms (META.O) platform.