There has never been a $5 trillion company. The closest companies to reaching that milestone are Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Both companies have market capitalizations of around $3.5 trillion. Using their current growth trajectories as a guide, they could reach that $5 trillion mark in a few years. But which one will get there first?
The signs point to Nvidia, based on its impressive growth and the increasing market for its products. Although Nvidia has made investors a boatload of money over the past few years, there’s still plenty ahead, making it an attractive stock to own right now.
Here’s why Nvidia has the potential to be the first $5 trillion company by 2028.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia’s rise goes hand-in-hand with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the rise of data centers that help process AI computations. AI hyperscalers (large-scale cloud service providers that offer massive computing resources, storage, and networking infrastructure) like Microsoft are racing to install as much equipment as possible to run AI workloads. That way, they can profit from the various companies running AI on their servers by charging usage fees.
While multiple companies are pursuing this approach, Nvidia is the main supplier of the graphics processing units (GPUs) central to their operation. And while there are alternatives to Nvidia’s products, it has a 90% or greater share in the data center GPU market, similar to Alphabet‘s dominance in the search engine industry (through Google). This helps put Nvidia’s dominance into perspective. Even better, the demand for data centers is growing far quicker than the growth in Search.
Nearly every AI hyperscaler has announced record data center capital expenditures in 2025. Planning, developing, and constructing the sites on which these centers are built takes years, so this heightened spending will persist for multiple years. A third-party estimate Nvidia cited during its 2025 GTC event said global data center spending was $400 billion in 2024, but it is expected to rise to $1 trillion by 2028.
For reference, during FY 2025 (which encompasses most of 2024), Nvidia’s data center division delivered $115 billion in revenue. So, for every $100 spent on data centers, about $29 went to Nvidia.
What will this mean for Nvidia in the future?
Let’s take a conservative approach to these growth estimates. Say data center capital expenditures only rise to $800 billion, and Nvidia’s share of that revenue falls from 29% to 25%. If that happens, Nvidia will still make about $160 billion in revenue from data centers alone in 2028. In FY 2025, Nvidia’s non-data center divisions produced $16 billion in revenue.
Assuming other divisions won’t grow and combined with the projected data center revenue, we’d get $216 billion. That’s a 46% gain from today’s revenue levels.
If Nvidia’s market cap were increased by the corresponding projected revenue growth, it would be $5.03 trillion.
Certain caveats to this argument exist, like what happens if Nvidia’s margins slip or if its valuation decreases substantially. However, we’ve already built in some of that by removing some market share and lowering the total dollar figure of data center build-outs.
I think Nvidia will be the first company to cross the $5 trillion threshold, and it will likely do so in the next few years. Nvidia’s potential is still rising, and investors should ensure that they’re invested in this top-notch AI play for the foreseeable future.
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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Keithen Drury has positions in Alphabet and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
