Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gestures during the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 17, 2026.
Nvidia's stock rose 4.3% to close at $208.27 on Friday, pushing the company's market capitalization past $5 trillion as investors piled into the AI chip trade ahead of earnings next week from tech's hyperscalers.
The rally was sparked by better-than-expected earnings late Thursday from chipmaker Intel, which has largely been left out of the AI market until recently. Intel shares spiked 24%, their best performance since 1987.
Advanced Micro Devices, which competes with Nvidia and Intel, jumped 14%, while mobile device chipmaker Qualcomm climbed 11%.
Nvidia's graphics processing units are relied on by Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon as well as model developers OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is up more than 14-fold since the end of 2022, driven by soaring demand for artificial intelligence services and models.
The Nasdaq is now up 15% in April, headed for its best month since April 2020. Nvidia does face increasing competition in AI, with Alphabet, a major Nvidia customer, announcing new chips that will try to take on Nvidia's offerings when they become available to cloud customers later this year.