Nvidia became the first publicly traded company to surpass a $4 trillion market capitalization on Wednesday, as its shares climbed as much as 2.5% to a record intraday high of roughly $164 on the New York Stock Exchange. The advance builds on a rally driven by unrelenting demand for the company’s artificial-intelligence processors and lifts its stock more than 1,300% since late 2022. The milestone vaults the Santa Clara-based chipmaker past Microsoft, valued at about $3.7 trillion, and Apple at roughly $3.1 trillion, to become the world’s most valuable company. Nvidia’s swelling size gives it the largest single weighting in the S&P 500 at around 7.5%, helping the benchmark rise 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite 0.9% on the day. Nvidia has added $3 trillion in market value in just over two years, underscoring investors’ conviction that its graphics-processing units will remain central to the generative-AI boom. Analysts point to the company’s expanding data-center lineup and software ecosystem as additional tailwinds, while cautioning that export curbs, trade tariffs and intensifying competition from rivals developing their own AI chips could temper future growth.