Nvidia’s market value has climbed above Germany’s projected economic output, highlighting the extraordinary scale reached by the world’s largest technology companies during the artificial intelligence boom.
The US semiconductor company reached a market capitalisation of $5.7 trillion in mid-May, according to CompaniesMarketCap data cited by Euronews. That places it above Germany’s projected 2026 gross domestic product of $5.45 trillion, based on International Monetary Fund estimates.
Germany remains Europe’s largest economy and the third largest in the world after the United States and China. The comparison means Nvidia is now valued above every individual European economy, including the UK, France, Italy and Spain.
Nvidia, whose chips are central to artificial intelligence systems as well as gaming and data centre technology, became the first company to pass $5 trillion in market capitalisation in October 2025. Its rapid rise has been driven by investor expectations that demand for AI infrastructure will continue to expand sharply.
US tech giants outpace Europe’s largest economies
The scale of the largest US technology companies becomes even clearer when their combined value is compared with national economies.
The five biggest US companies by market capitalisation, Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, are worth a combined $20.81 trillion. That is higher than the combined GDP of Europe’s five largest economies, Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain, which stands at $18.14 trillion.
Nvidia alone is also valued above the combined GDP of the 19 smallest EU economies, estimated at $5.02 trillion.
Alphabet and Apple are larger than every European economy except Germany, while Microsoft and Amazon both exceed Italy’s GDP. France, however, remains larger than both Microsoft and Amazon when measured by GDP.
Europe lacks companies of comparable scale
No European company comes close to the market value of the largest US technology groups.
Dutch chipmaker ASML is the highest-ranked European company on the global list, with a market capitalisation of about $611 billion. Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche is valued at around $335 billion, while UK-based AstraZeneca stands at about $287 billion.
The comparison has limits. GDP measures the value of goods and services produced by an economy in a year, while market capitalisation reflects the stock market value of a company’s equity and investor expectations for future earnings.
Even so, the figures underline how far the largest technology companies have expanded, and how dominant US firms have become in the global race for artificial intelligence, semiconductors and digital infrastructure.
Source: Euronews
