SANTA CLARA, California — Nvidia became the first publicly traded company to reach a $5 trillion market capitalisation on Wednesday, as investor demand for artificial intelligence hardware drove its shares to a record high. The milestone extended a rally built on insatiable demand for its data-centre chips.

The chipmaker crossed the threshold roughly a year after becoming the first firm valued at $4 trillion, underscoring the speed of the AI-driven boom. Nvidia's Blackwell and successor Rubin accelerators dominate the market for training and running large AI models, with cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon and Google among its largest buyers.

The surge followed strong signals from the broader technology sector. Microsoft reported better-than-expected quarterly profit driven by Azure AI demand, reinforcing expectations that spending on AI infrastructure would continue at record levels into 2027. Analysts at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America raised price targets on Nvidia in recent weeks.

The valuation intensified debate over whether AI-related equities had entered bubble territory. Chief executive Jensen Huang has repeatedly argued that global demand for computing power remains in its early stages, pointing to a backlog of orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Sceptics warned that concentration risk in US markets had grown dangerously large. Nvidia is scheduled to report its fiscal third-quarter results in November, when investors will scrutinise guidance on Rubin production ramps and export conditions for the Chinese market.