Nvidia's headquarters in Santa Clara, California. Photo: AFP
Nvidia's market capitalisation hit US$4 trillion (NZ$6.68t) on Wednesday, making it the first public company in the world to reach that milestone.
The computer chip designer's shares rose by as much as 2.5 percent to an all-time high of US$164 (NZ$274), in line with an ongoing surge in demand for artificial intelligence technologies.
Nvidia's market value increased more than1500 percent in the past five years.
The stock's recent rally followed a sluggish start to the year, when the emergence of a Chinese discount artificial intelligence model developed by DeepSeek shook confidence in stocks linked to the sector.
Nvidia achieved a US$1t (NZ1.67t) market value for the first time in June 2023 and tripled in value about a year later, which was faster than Apple and Microsoft.
At the time they were the only other US firms with a market value of more than US$3 trillion.
However, the surge in demand for AI services is also putting a strain on energy supplies.
America's largest power grid is under strain as data centres and AI chatbots consume power faster than new plants can be built.
Electricity bills are projected to surge by more than 20 percent this summer in 13 US states - from Illinois to Tennessee and Virginia to New Jersey - serving 67 million customers in a region with the most data centres in the world.
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