英伟达超越微软，成为全球市值最高公司Nvidia Becomes Most Valuable Public Company, Topping Microsoft
《纽时》TRIPP MICKLE, JOE RENNISON2024年6月19日
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Move over, Microsoft and Apple. The stock market has a new king.
微软和苹果，让开让开。股市的新王者驾到。
On Tuesday, Nvidia leapfrogged two of tech’s most storied names to become the world’s most valuable public company, according to data from S&P Global. Its ascent has been powered by the boom in generative artificial intelligence and surging demand for the company’s chips — known as graphics processing units, or GPUs — which have made it possible to create A.I. systems.
标准普尔全球的数据显示，周二，英伟达超越了这两家最知名的科技企业，成为全球市值最高的上市公司。它的崛起得益于生成式人工智能的蓬勃发展，以及对该公司的芯片——也就是图形处理器，即GPU——需求激增，这些芯片使得创建人工智能系统成为了可能。
Nvidia’s rise is among the fastest in market history. Just two years ago, the company’s market valuation was a little over $400 billion. Now, in the span of a year, it has gone from $1 trillion to more than $3 trillion.
英伟达的崛起速度在股市历史上名列前茅。就在两年前，该公司的市值还仅略高于4000亿美元。如今它在一年时间里从1万亿美元增长到逾3万亿美元。
On Tuesday, Nvidia’s share price rose 3.6 percent, lifting its value to $3.34 trillion. Microsoft and Apple both fell, ending the day trailing the Silicon Valley chip maker.
周二，英伟达的股价上涨了3.6%，市值升至3.34万亿美元。微软和苹果双双下跌，收盘落后于这家硅谷芯片制造商。
Nvidia’s ascent is a testament to how much artificial intelligence has upended the world’s biggest companies. The rise of the powerful technology first elevated Microsoft to the biggest market capitalization in January, dethroning Apple, before pushing Nvidia to take the crown. Last week, Apple said it, too, was getting into the A.I. game and will add the technology to its products, including the iPhone, this fall.
英伟达的崛起证明了人工智能对全球最大公司的颠覆程度。这项强大技术的崛起首先使微软在今年1月取代苹果，跃升为市值最大的公司，然后又推动英伟达夺得桂冠。上周，苹果公司表示，它也要加入人工智能博弈，并将在今年秋天把这项技术添加到包括iPhone在内的产品中。
Years before other big chip companies, Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, bet that GPUs would be essential to building artificial intelligence, and he tailored his company to accommodate what he believed would be tech’s next big boom.
早在其他大型芯片公司之前，英伟达的首席执行官黄仁勋就押注GPU将是构建人工智能的关键。他对自己的公司进行了调整，以适应他认为将是科技行业下一个大繁荣的趋势。
His big bet is paying off. By some measurements, Nvidia controls more than 80 percent of the market for the chips used in A.I. systems. Nvidia’s biggest customers regularly jockey for orders for chips to run computers in their giant data centers, and are building their own A.I. chips so they are not so dependent on one supplier.
他的豪赌正在获得回报。据统计，英伟达控制着人工智能系统所用芯片市场的80%以上。它的最大客户经常争夺芯片订单，这些芯片是巨型数据中心运行计算机所不可缺少的东西，而这些客户也在制造自己的人工智能芯片，以减少对单一供应商的依赖。
“No one else fully saw or appreciated this,” said Daniel Newman, chief executive of the Futurum Group, a tech research firm. “They saw the trend, built for the trend and enabled the market. They can effectively charge whatever they want.”
“没有人能够完全预见或理解这一点，”科技研究公司Futurum Group的首席执行官丹尼尔·纽曼说。“他们发现了这一趋势，顺应了这一趋势，并推动了市场的发展。他们实际上可以随心所欲地定价。”
Nvidia’s ascent has made Mr. Huang, 61, a celebrity in the tech world. After a computer conference in Taiwan early this month, he was surrounded by attendees who wanted his autograph, including a woman who asked him to sign her chest.
英伟达的崛起让现年61岁的黄仁勋成为了科技界的名人。本月初在台湾的一个电脑展上，索要签名的与会者将他团团围住，其中一位女士要求他把名字签在她的胸部。
The company’s rise is reminiscent of dot-com era titans like Cisco and Juniper Networks, which built the equipment that ran communications networks for the internet. Cisco’s shares increased more than a thousandfold between its initial public offering in 1990 and 2000, when it briefly became the world’s most valuable company.
该公司的崛起让人想起了互联网泡沫时代的那些巨头，比如思科和瞻博网络，它们制造了运行互联网通信网络的设备。从1990年首次公开募股到2000年，思科的股价上涨了1000多倍，一度成为世界上市值最高的公司。
The speed at which Nvidia’s value has grown has been startling. Apple crossed $1 trillion in August 2018 and became the first $3 trillion company last June. Microsoft also took nearly five years to climb from $1 trillion to $3 trillion.
英伟达市值的增长速度令人吃惊。苹果在2018年8月突破1万亿美元，去年6月才成为首家市值达到3万亿美元的公司。微软从1万亿美元上升到3万亿美元也花了近五年时间。
Nvidia’s investors are betting more on its potential than on its current profits. Microsoft and Apple each generated more than $21 billion in profit during the three months that ended in March. Nvidia generated $14.88 billion in profit in its most recent quarter, which ended in April, but that was up more than 600 percent from a year earlier.
英伟达的投资者更多是看好它的潜力，而非当前的利润。在截至今年3月的三个月里，微软和苹果均创造了超过210亿美元的利润。在截至4月的最近一个季度，英伟达创造了148.8亿美元的利润，但与去年同期相比增长了600%以上。
“The numbers have gotten so big so quickly that people worry: Is this sustainable?” said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst with Bernstein Research. “If the return on A.I. turns out to not be there, then the whole thing comes crumbling down.”
“数字变得如此之大，如此之快，以至于人们担心：这是可持续的吗？”伯恩斯坦研究的分析师斯泰西·拉斯根说。“如果人工智能的回报不存在，那么整件事就会轰然倒塌。”
Just 12 companies have led the S&P 500 by market valuation since the index was created in 1926: AT&T, Apple, Cisco, DuPont, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Walmart and now Nvidia, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
自标普500指数于1926年创建以来，只有12家公司在该指数中市值居冠：AT&T、苹果、思科、杜邦、埃克森美孚、通用电气、通用汽车、IBM、微软、菲利普莫里斯、沃尔玛，以及现在的英伟达。
Nvidia’s rise has been fueled by its ability to consistently exceed Wall Street expectations. Sales in its last quarter tripled from a year earlier to $26 billion. It also projected that it would double sales in the current quarter.
英伟达的崛起得益于其持续超越华尔街预期的能力。上一个季度的销售额同比增长了两倍，达到260亿美元。该公司还预计，本季度的销售额将同比翻一番。
Nvidia sells everything from chips, and the software needed to build A.I. systems with those chips, to supercomputers. The machines, which have 35,000 parts and are packed with the company’s GPUs, sell for $250,000 or more. A new supercomputer that Nvidia is bringing to the market could sell for more than $1 million, Mr. Rasgon said.
英伟达的产品涉猎广泛，从芯片到用这些芯片构建人工智能系统所需的软件，再到超级计算机。这些机器有3.5万个部件，配备了该公司的图形处理器，售价为25万美元起。据拉斯根称，英伟达即将推出的一款新型超级计算机售价可能超过100万美元。
“Even though the cost of the system is going up, the performance per dollar is getting better with every generation, and that’s how they’re able to keep customers buying,” Mr. Rasgon said.
“尽管系统的成本在上升，但每一代产品的性价比都在提高，这就是他们一直能卖出去的原因，”拉斯贡说。
Wall Street has been watching for signs of a slowdown. Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon have all developed their own chips that can be used for A.I., and traditional chip rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have tried to cut into Nvidia’s business with their own A.I. processors.
华尔街一直在寻找该公司增长放缓的迹象。微软、Meta、谷歌和亚马逊都开发了自己的人工智能芯片，而传统芯片竞争对手如超威半导体和英特尔也试图通过自己的人工智能处理器挑战英伟达的业务。
But Mr. Huang believes that it will take time for anyone to catch up to Nvidia. The company has a decade head start and has cultivated a large community of A.I. programmers who prefer its technology.
但黄仁勋认为，赶上英伟达需要时间。该公司有十年的领先优势，并培养了一大批对它的技术青睐有加的人工智能程序员。
“We are fundamentally changing how computing works and what computers can do,” Mr. Huang said in a conference call with analysts in May. “The next industrial revolution has begun.”
“我们正在从根本上改变计算的工作方式和计算机的功能，”黄仁勋在5月份与分析师的电话会议上说，“下一次工业革命已经开始。”
Tripp Mickle为时报报道苹果公司和硅谷新闻，常驻旧金山。他对苹果公司的关注包括产品发布、制造问题和政治挑战。他也报道整个科技行业的趋势，包括裁员、生成式AI和机器人出租车等。点击查看更多关于他的信息。

Joe Rennison撰写有关金融市场的文章，内容包括记录股市的变幻莫测、解释华尔街内部人士常常难以理解的交易决策等。点击查看更多关于他的信息。

翻译：杜然

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