Nvidia Stock Soars Past $4 Trillion Market Cap

Nvidia Corporation, founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a pioneering American technology company best known for inventing the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999[1][2][4]. Initially focused on GPUs for video gaming, Nvidia has expanded its scope to serve diverse markets, including artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), professional visualization, automotive technology, and mobile devices[1][3]. Nvidia’s GPUs, such as the GeForce series for gamers and the RTX series for professional applications, are central to its dominance, controlling over 90% of the discrete GPU market as of early 2025[1][4]. The company’s investment in CUDA, a parallel computing platform and API launched in the early 2000s, revolutionized GPU computing by enabling GPUs to accelerate a wide range of compute-intensive tasks, particularly in AI and scientific research[1][4]. By 2025, Nvidia commanded over 80% of the GPU market for AI training and inference and supplied chips to more than 75% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers[1]. Nvidia’s influence extends beyond hardware. It offers a comprehensive ecosystem including software platforms like Omniverse for 3D simulation and digital twins, AI frameworks such as MONAI for medical imaging, and Jetson for robotics and edge AI[2][3]. Its technologies power autonomous vehicle data centers, AI factories, and cloud gaming services like GeForce Now[2][7]. Financially, Nvidia achieved record full-year revenue of $130.5 billion in fiscal 2025, with a workforce of over 36,000 employees worldwide and a robust patent portfolio exceeding 8,700 applications[2]. The company is recognized for innovation and workplace excellence, topping Forbes’ "America’s Best Companies 2025" and Fast Company’s "World’s Most Innovative Companies"

## Overview and Purpose NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is a global electronic marketplace for buying and selling securities, best known as the world’s second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization, trailing only the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)[3]. Its core mission is to facilitate transparent, efficient, and technology-driven trading of equities, fixed income, derivatives, and commodities for investors worldwide[3]. NASDAQ is especially recognized as the preferred exchange for technology and growth-oriented companies, including giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, due to its innovative, fully electronic trading platform[3][6]. ## History and Evolution NASDAQ was launched on February 8, 1971, by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD, now FINRA) as the world’s first electronic stock market[1][3]. Its creation aimed to automate and bring transparency to the fragmented over-the-counter (OTC) securities market, which previously relied on decentralized, phone-based trading[1]. Initially, NASDAQ served as an electronic quote display system, but trades were still executed by phone; over time, it evolved into a fully automated exchange, executing trades electronically and setting new standards for speed and efficiency in financial markets[1][7]. A pivotal moment came in 2006, when NASDAQ officially became a licensed national securities exchange[2]. The following year, it merged with the Scandinavian exchange group OMX, expanding its global footprint and rebranding as NASDAQ OMX Group[2]. This merger positioned NASDAQ as a leader not only in U.S. markets but also in Europe, managing 25 markets, five central securities depositories, and one clearing house[3]. ## Key Achievements NASDAQ’s history is marked by several industry firsts: it was the first stock exchange to launch a website, the first to sell its trading technology to other exchanges, and a pioneer in cloud-based record keeping[3]. Its introduction of electronic trading