Part VIII · The New Machines

The Hinge of the Global Economy

In about thirteen months Nvidia went from a $1 trillion company to the most valuable on Earth. The reason was on the right: it sold the one thing every AI lab needed — and data-center revenue went from roughly $15 billion to over $115 billion in two fiscal years.

Market capitalization (left)
Data-center revenue, per fiscal year (right)
Year-over-year growth

Market capitalization

A staircase to $3 trillion — and, on some days, to #1 in the world.

Data-center revenue

Nvidia's fiscal year ends late January. The segment roughly tripled, then doubled again.

How the spike started. In May 2023 Nvidia guided to $11 billion in quarterly revenue against a ~$7 billion expectation. The stock rose 24% in a day, adding ~$184 billion in value — the largest single-day gain in market history at the time. The H100 GPU cost about $30,000 and could not be made fast enough; by late 2024 Nvidia's gross margins were above 70%.

SOURCE · NEURON MAKERS, Ch. 35 (“The Trillion-Dollar Engine”) + research dossier 05 (Compute / Nvidia / Money). Underlying: Nvidia financial reports; public market-cap milestones. Fiscal years end late January (FY2023 = Jan 2023). Chapter rounds FY2025 data-center revenue to “approaching $100B”; dossier figure ~$115.2B plotted.