Nvidia is set to replace chip giant Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, in a major shake-up to the blue-chip index. The change underscores the surge in artificial intelligence and signals a significant shift within the semiconductor industry.
The switch will take place on Friday (Nov. 8), S&P Dow Jones revealed in a statement, in a bid to “ensure a more representative exposure to the semiconductors industry.” Nvidia has emerged as a leader in the AI chip market, taking the place of its struggling competitor Intel, which has held a spot on the Dow index since 1999.
Why Dow is swapping Intel for Nvidia
In July, ReadWrite reported that Microsoft had been dethroned as the world’s most valuable company by Nvidia, and as recently as Monday (Nov. 4), the chipmaker’s stock briefly overtook Apple’s, making it the world’s largest company. It isn’t the first time the company took the top spot from the tech giant as the market values Nvidia at $3.34tn.
Companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon are buying Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), including the H100, in huge volumes to assemble computer clusters for their AI initiatives.
Consequently, Nvidia’s revenue has more than doubled in each of the last five quarters and tripled in at least three. The company has indicated that demand for its next-generation AI GPU, known as Blackwell, is “insane.”
With Blackwell expected to cost around $30,000 to $40,000 per unit, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in October, “Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first.”
The firm has been at the forefront of securing a partnership with Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, to build ‘AI factories’ together.
The other Taiwanese tech giant is preparing to build a massive manufacturing facility in Mexico dedicated to producing Nvidia’s GB200 superchips. The scale of this new plant has been described by its chairman, Young Liu, as “very, very enormous.”
Featured image: Ideogram
