Nvidia's value soars by $400 billion in 5 days. That's more than Costco is worth.

• Nvidia stock climbed 4% on Tuesday, extending its rally to 14% in five days.

• The chipmaker's market value soared by $400 billion — more than Costco is worth.

• Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang are riding high on massive buzz around its new Blackwell chip.

Fresh buzz around AI lifted Nvidia stock by 4% on Tuesday, extending its rally to 14% over the last five trading days and leaving it just shy of its record high.

The microchip maker's market value has jumped by $400 billion to $3.26 trillion since last Wednesday's open. It's now more valuable than Microsoft and second only to Apple among the world's public companies.

Its $400 billion increase in value within a week is worth underscoring. Costco, which generated $254 billion of revenue and $7.4 billion of net income last year, is worth less than that. It's roughly one-eighth as valuable as Nvidia, which made only $61 billion in revenue last year but generated almost $30 billion of net income.

Nvidia shares have surged by about 170% this year, and by around 800% since the start of 2023. There's been no greater beneficiary than founder and CEO Jensen Huang, whose net worth has ballooned from about $14 billion to $106 billion in under two years.

He now ranks as the world's 11th richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, ahead of fashion mogul Amancio Ortega and computing pioneer Michael Dell.

The semiconductor company's latest rally reflects investors' excitement about its new Blackwell chip, which Huang has hailed as "the engine to power this new industrial revolution."

Its significance was evident back in March, when a press release announcing its arrival included quotes from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Amazon's Andy Jassy, and Alphabet's Sundar Pichai.

Nvidia bosses said in late August they would ramp up Blackwell production in the fourth quarter and sell chips worth billions of dollars before the year ends.

More recently, Huang and Nvidia's partners have described immense demand for the processors — designed to power AI applications at a fraction of the cost and energy consumption of predecessors — and other chipmakers like Super Micro Computer have reported brisk sales.

Bullish traders also boosted the other "Magnificent Seven" stocks by about 1% across the board on Tuesday, as they wagered other Big Tech names would cash in on the AI wave.

Nvidia is set to make further gains on Wednesday, with the stock up 1.3% in premarket trading.

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