Nvidia's market cap reached $5.7 trillion in mid-May, above Germany's projected 2026 GDP of $5.45 trillion. The five largest U.S. companies, Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, have a combined $20.81 trillion market cap, above the $18.14 trillion GDP total for Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain.
AI breadth widens
Intel is the sharper 2026 move. Its shares rose 114% in April and were up 214.6% in 2026 through Thursday, more than eight times Nvidia's return over the same period. The rally has shifted attention from training chips to semiconductors used for inference, the computing behind answers generated by AI agents.
The same semiconductor bid is showing up outside the U.S. South Korea and Taiwan are among the year's strongest stock markets, with chipmakers including Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company central to the move. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index was up 22.2% in 2026 through Thursday, compared with 8.8% for the S&P 500 and 7.6% for the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF.
The concentration problem is now global. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has become a broader chip gauge, with Intel, Nvidia, ASML and TSMC among its top names. Europe's largest listed technology proxy is far smaller: ASML ranked 21st globally with a market value of $610.69 billion, while Nvidia's market cap exceeded the combined GDP of the 19 smallest EU economies.
Geography still matters. Taiwan's role in advanced chip production gives the Taiwan Strait outsized economic importance, and Taiwan came up in meetings around the U.S.-China summit in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and says reunification will happen eventually.
