Helping the growing demand for all things artificial intelligence (AI) NVIDIA suddenly became the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Between a $4.6 trillion market cap and the continued growth of the AI accelerator market, few companies have the potential to surpass it anytime soon.
Still, few doesn’t mean zero, there’s competition from companies like AMD may slow its growth. This could provide some of the top companies with an opportunity to claim the title of the world’s largest market capitalization. If there’s one company that surpasses Nvidia, it’s likely to be one of these two companies.
Image source: Getty Images.
After Google parent company OpenAI released the AI large language model GPT-4 letter (Nasdaq: Google)(Nasdaq: Google) When it comes to AI-related searches, people think it will be left behind. Google’s search market share has fallen below 90%, and its artificial intelligence engine often bypasses the advertising ecosystem that still generates most of Alphabet’s revenue.
However, Alphabet was an early pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and has always invested in technological improvements. Additionally, the company’s vast resources will allow it to spend $91 billion to $93 billion in capital expenditures (capex) in 2025 alone.
Today, the latest version of Google Gemini has made great progress in competing with ChatGPT and other AI engines. Additionally, Google Cloud continues to grow rapidly and Waymo appears to be becoming one of the top self-driving companies.
Additionally, Alphabet could continue these investments. As of the third quarter of 2025, it held more than $98 billion in liquidity. Additionally, it generated nearly $74 billion in free cash flow over the past 12 months, a figure that’s truly no Including the capital expenditures mentioned above.
In fact, with Alphabet shares up nearly 65% in the past 12 months, investors have begun to take notice of its growth potential, and it might not be too late to buy now. With a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 31, it is the lowest-valued stock after Magnificent Seven meta platform. Furthermore, if it could match Nvidia’s current price-to-earnings ratio of 46 times, it would already have the title of the world’s largest market capitalization.
So as Google’s parent company and Nvidia’s largest peer continue to advance in the race, Alphabet will be in the race for the world’s largest market capitalization and could overtake Nvidia over time.
Another company that could surpass Nvidia’s market cap is Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA). In many ways, this choice seems more surprising than Alphabet.
With a price-to-earnings ratio of 290, it has the highest market capitalization among the Big Seven. Furthermore, its $1.4 trillion market capitalization is less than one-third the size of Nvidia. With vehicle deliveries declining, both numbers seem more likely to fall than rise.
Furthermore, Tesla’s $8.9 billion in capital expenditures and $6.8 billion in free cash flow represent only a small portion of Alphabet’s overall business investments. This situation may explain Tesla’s modest stock price gains of only about 6% last year.
However, like Alphabet, Tesla has emerged as a leader in self-driving and, unlike Waymo, also produces its own vehicles. So it’s adding specific hardware tailored to its Robotaxi platform, which could conceivably provide a more complete autonomous vehicle ecosystem than its competitors.
Furthermore, if one is to believe analysis from Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, the company will hit a price target of $2,600 per share by 2029, representing a nearly six-fold increase from current levels. If Tesla achieves this price target, its market value will exceed $8.6 trillion, nearly double Nvidia’s current market value.
Tesla will reach that price as subscriptions to its robotaxi platform surpass car sales and become the company’s main source of net profit, according to Ark Invest.
Investors should also keep in mind that software platforms tend to have much higher profit margins than car sales. This arguably makes the above P/E ratio based on car sales relatively meaningless.
So when you combine higher margins with a more complete ecosystem, Tesla could surpass Nvidia as it drives a critical emerging industry.
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Will Healy works at Advanced Micro Devices. The Motley Fool owns and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Nvidia and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
2 Stocks That Will Be Worth More than Nvidia in 5 Years Originally Posted by The Motley Fool
