• Nvidia shares closed at a record high on Monday after rising 18% in nine trading days.

• The chipmaker's market value rose by $517 billion – more than Oracle is worth.

• Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang are causing a lot of excitement about the new Blackwell chip.

The new excitement around AI sent Nvidia shares soaring to a record $138 on Monday, increasing their gain to 18% in the last nine trading days.

The microchip maker's market value has increased by $517 billion to $3.39 trillion since its Oct. 1 closing price. It is now less than 4% away from overtaking Apple, valued at $3.52 trillion, as the world's most valuable publicly traded company.

Nvidia has gained more value in nine trading days than some of the world's largest companies are worth.

Oracle ($488 billion), Mastercard ($468 billion) and Home Depot ($413 billion) are all less than a sixth as valuable, despite Nvidia's revenue of just $61 billion and less last year than $30 billion in net profit.

Shares of the chipmaker are up about 179% this year and about 800% since the start of 2023. One of the biggest beneficiaries was founder and CEO Jensen Huang, whose net worth rose from about $14 billion to $121 billion in less than two years.

In the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is now ranked 11th among the richest people in the world, ahead of computer pioneer Michael Dell and fashion mogul Amancio Ortega.

Nvidia's recent rally reflects investor excitement over its new Blackwell chip, which Huang has called “the engine for this new industrial revolution.”

Its importance was made clear 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 Sundar Pichai Alphabet included.

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

More recently, partners at Huang and Nvidia have described huge demand for the processors, which are designed to power AI applications at a fraction of the cost and power consumption of their predecessors, and other chipmakers such as Super Micro Computer have reported brisk sales.

Rival chipmaker AMD posted its biggest share price decline in more than a month on Monday after unveiling new AI chips, but provided few details on customer demand and financial performance.

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