San francisco: US tech giant Nvidia hit a $4 trillion market capitalization on Wednesday, becoming the first public company in history to reach this milestone. The chipmaker's shares saw an increase of 2.6% as of 1400GMT, amid growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

According to Anadolu Agency, Nvidia has surpassed both Apple and Microsoft, which previously reached a $3 trillion market value, making it the most valuable corporation in the world. Founded in 1993 in California, the company first crossed the $2 trillion threshold in February 2024 and then topped $3 trillion in June. Nvidia has benefited significantly from the rising demand for AI processors and hardware, especially following the development of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.

While Nvidia continues to lead the market for graphics processing units (GPUs), essential for AI tasks and large language models (LLMs), the rapid growth this year is surprising given the company's exclusion from the Chinese market. In recent months, Nvidia has faced a series of export controls and bans from the US government. In April, the Trump administration imposed additional regulations that halted sales of its H20 AI processor, designed to comply with earlier restrictions.

In response to these challenges, Nvidia had to write down $4.5 billion in inventory and reported that the US government-imposed adjustments would cost the business $8 billion in sales. Currently, Nvidia is not relying on any Chinese sales. Despite these hurdles, Nvidia's May earnings release showed a 69% year-over-year sales growth, driven by a 73% increase in its data center division.