Nvidia Hits a Record $5.1 Trillion While Its Stock Stalls in 2026

Nvidia’s market value has climbed past $5.1 trillion, the highest any publicly traded company has ever reached. The stock, though, has barely moved all year, gaining about 5% while the S&P 500 is up nearly 10%.

Nvidia’s own guidance for this quarter assumes zero data center revenue from China. Its newest AI pitch to gamers has drawn a real backlash. And Wall Street itself is split on whether the stock is cheap or finally out of room to run.

Nvidia Becomes the Most Valuable Company in History

Multiple independent trackers landed on nearly the same figure this month. Companiesmarketcap.com put Nvidia’s market cap at $5.109 trillion in July, calling it the most valuable public company on record. Stockanalysis.com and Macrotrends each showed nearly the same number, around $5.1 trillion.

Jensen Huang, now Nvidia’s chief executive, founded the company with Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky in Santa Clara, California, in 1993. Nvidia went public on the Nasdaq in January 1999, years before anyone described what it built as an AI chip.

The size of the climb since then is hard to picture. Nvidia’s market cap has grown 907,782% since that 1999 debut, when the company was worth about $563 million. Even measured over just the past twelve months, its value is up nearly 36%, driven almost entirely by data center demand rather than gaming.

The Stock That Refuses to Rally

Investors who bought Nvidia in 2023, 2024 or 2025 got used to returns that beat almost everything else on the market. This year has broken that pattern. The stock is up only about 5% year to date, a run that would look fine for a utility company and, next to Nvidia’s own history, feels like a stall.

Shares peaked at $236.37 on May 14, according to LiteFinance data, before sliding back toward $204 by mid-July. That round trip has erased close to $1 trillion in market value since May, even as suppliers such as SK Hynix ramp up production to keep pace with AI demand.

Nvidia now trades at roughly 21.7 times forward earnings, a multiple that sits close to the S&P 500’s own, according to a Motley Fool analysis. Compared with the returns Nvidia investors enjoyed in recent years, this year’s performance, in the analysis’s own words, feels like “an absolute failure.” A stock that recently commanded a steep premium over the broader market is now pricing in ordinary growth, even with quarterly data center revenue still climbing by double digits.

Analysts Can’t Agree on What Happens Next

The split shows up most clearly in how Wall Street’s own analysts are framing the stock right now. Some see a growth company trading at a discount. Others see a name traders are actively fleeing.

• Bank of America and Morgan Stanley sit on the bullish side. BofA maintained its buy rating this month and told clients Nvidia remains one of the few durable growth stories left in the sector, while Morgan Stanley pointed to four new AI growth drivers behind a recent bounce in the shares.
• Hightower’s Stephanie Link named Nvidia, alongside Broadcom, the market’s “anti-momentum trade” right now, meaning traders are rotating out of both stocks.
• BTIG analyst Krinsky told clients he sees more downside ahead for semiconductor stocks broadly, not just Nvidia.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer added his own warning this month, telling viewers that investors piling into trillion-dollar technology giants at current prices are making a mistake. His caution covers the whole megacap tech cohort, not Nvidia alone, but Nvidia is the biggest name in it.

Nvidia’s Earnings Still Look Enormous

Whatever the stock is doing, the underlying business is not slowing down. Nvidia’s data center revenue hit a record $75.2 billion in its fiscal first quarter, up 92% from a year earlier and 21% from the prior quarter, according to the company’s own securities filing. The quarter ended April 26 and results were reported on May 20.

Profitability held up just as well. GAAP gross margin came in at 75%, net income under GAAP totaled $43 billion, and earnings per share reached $1.76. Across the full fiscal year, Nvidia returned $41.1 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, with $58.5 billion still authorized and unspent.

Management also told analysts it now holds roughly $500 billion in confirmed orders for Blackwell and Rubin chips stretching through the end of 2026. Nvidia and memory maker SK Hynix also announced a multiyear partnership this year to expand memory supply for what the companies call AI factories, the kind of deal that only makes sense if demand keeps outrunning supply.

Why Is China Missing From Nvidia’s Own Forecast?

Nvidia’s own guidance for the fiscal second quarter assumes zero data center compute revenue from China. That is a deliberate call, reflecting both Washington’s export limits and Beijing’s own push to build AI chips that never touch a Nvidia part number.

• Chinese startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.
• Zhipu AI is in early talks with domestic chip design houses about building a bespoke AI chip of its own.
• Nvidia’s own quarterly filing states plainly that it is not assuming any data center compute revenue from China in its outlook.
• Wells Fargo told clients this month that Nvidia’s comeback in the Chinese market may be limited even if restrictions ease.

None of this means Nvidia has been shut out entirely. Reporting on the quarter noted the company had already received licenses to ship small volumes of its H200 chip into China, a narrow opening rather than a closed door.

Gamers Turn on Nvidia’s AI Pitch

Nvidia’s most public misstep this year had nothing to do with China or Wall Street. At GTC, short for GPU Technology Conference and Nvidia’s flagship developer event, the company unveiled DLSS 5 (Deep Learning Super Sampling), its newest AI-powered upscaling technology, and pitched it as a breakthrough meant to close the distance between rendered graphics and real life.

Gaming communities did not take that pitch at face value. Negative sentiment about Nvidia online sat around 3% before the reveal, then jumped to 12.3% within hours of the DLSS 5 announcement, according to social listening firm Visibrain. Creators on TikTok leaned into humor over technical critique, with many using the phrase “AI slop” to describe what they were seeing.

Nvidia is still worth more than any company in history. Its customers in China and its own players in gaming are both pushing back on its AI story right now, for very different reasons.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Nvidia pay shareholders in dividends?

Nvidia pays a quarterly cash dividend of a penny per share. The company paid its dividend on April 1 to shareholders of record as of March 11, a modest payout relative to the buybacks that make up most of its shareholder returns.

How is Nvidia’s business actually split?

Nvidia reports results across two segments. Compute and Networking covers data center accelerated computing, AI software and automotive platforms, while Graphics covers GeForce gaming GPUs and Quadro or RTX workstation cards. Data center now generates the large majority of total revenue.

Who founded Nvidia and when?

Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky founded Nvidia in Santa Clara, California, in 1993. The company went public on the Nasdaq in January 1999, a small fraction of what it is worth today.

Is Nvidia’s growth actually slowing down?

Not by the numbers Nvidia itself has reported. Data center revenue grew 92% year over year last quarter, and the company’s own guidance calls for total revenue of $91 billion in the current quarter. The stock’s flat 2026 performance reflects valuation and sentiment shifts more than any slowdown in the underlying business.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Nvidia shares and other securities carry risk, including the risk of loss, and market figures cited here are accurate as of publication in mid-July 2026. Consult a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions.