How Nvidia Became the Most Important Company in AI

Nvidia's market cap exceeded $3T, making it the world's most valuable semiconductor company. CUDA software ecosystem (launched 2007) created 15+ years of developer lock-in before competitors caught up. H100/H200 GPUs are the training chips of choice for every major AI lab. Data center revenue exceeds $100B annually. The moat: hardware + CUDA + NVLink interconnect + software stack creates a full-stack advantage competitors can't easily replicate. Risk: customers (Google TPU, Amazon Trainium, Microsoft Maia) are building custom chips to reduce Nvidia dependence.