Nvidia dethroned Apple as the world’s most valuable company on Friday, following a record-breaking rally in shares driven by insatiable demand for custom AI chips.

According to LSEG data, Nvidia’s stock market value briefly reached $3.53 trillion, just above Apple’s $3.52 trillion.

While Nvidia closed the day with a 0.8 percent increase in market value of $3.47 trillion, Apple’s shares increased by 0.4 percent, increasing the value of the iPhone manufacturer to $3.52 trillion.

Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft are among the tech giants that have helped push Wall Street to record highs this year, with market values ​​neck and neck.

Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft are among the tech giants that have helped push Wall Street to record highs this year, with their market values ​​neck-and-neck.

In June, Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company before being overtaken by Microsoft and Apple. The tech trio’s market caps have been at par for several months.

Microsoft’s market value reached $3.18 trillion, with its shares increasing by 0.8 percent.

The Silicon Valley chipmaker is the dominant supplier of processors used in AI computing, and the company has emerged as the big winner in the race to dominate the emerging technology among Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta Platforms and other heavyweights.

Shares of Nvidia, known as a designer of processors for video games since the 1990s, have risen nearly 18 percent so far in October after OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a $6.6 billion funding round.

Nvidia and other semiconductor stocks rose Friday after data storage company Western Digital reported quarterly profit that beat analysts’ forecasts, fueling optimism about data center demand.

“More companies are now embracing AI in their daily tasks, and demand for Nvidia chips remains strong,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

“It’s definitely in a sweet spot, and as long as we avoid a major economic downturn in the United States, there’s a sense that companies will continue to invest heavily in AI capabilities, creating a healthy tailwind for Nvidia.”

Shares of Nvidia reached a record high on Tuesday, continuing last week’s rise after TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, reported a forecast-beating 54 percent jump in quarterly profit, driven by rising demand for chips used in artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Apple is struggling with weak demand for its smartphones. While iPhone sales in China fell 0.3 percent in the third quarter, sales of phones produced by rival Huawei rose 42 percent.

With Apple set to announce its quarterly results on Thursday, analysts predict its revenue will rise 5.55 percent annually on average to $94.5 billion, LSEG data shows.

That compares with analysts’ forecasts for Nvidia to see revenue growth of about 82 percent to $32.9 billion.

Shares of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft have a huge impact on the value-rich tech sector as well as the broader US stock market; The trio makes up about a fifth of the weight of the S&P 500 index.

Optimism about the prospects for artificial intelligence, expectations that the Federal Reserve will significantly lower U.S. interest rates and, most recently, an optimistic start to earnings season helped the benchmark S&P 500 index rise to an all-time high last week.

Nvidia’s massive gains have helped boost the stock’s appeal to options traders, and the company’s options have been among the most traded on any given day in recent months, according to data from options analytics provider Trade Alert.

The stock is up nearly 190 percent so far this year as the boom in productive artificial intelligence has led to a series of breakout predictions from Nvidia.

“The question is whether the revenue stream will continue for a long time and be driven by investor sentiment rather than the ability to prove or disprove the thesis that AI is overrated,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments. A family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey.

“I think Nvidia knows its numbers are going to be pretty remarkable in the near term.”