Nvidia has become the world’s public company to have a $5 trillion valuation and CEO Jensen Huang was at the centre of the chipmaker’s rise. According to a report by Bloomberg, Nvidia added nearly $400 billion to its market capitalisation in just five days – topping the entire valuations of Toyota and Home Depot – due to a slew of deals.Huang himself added more than $9 billion to his net worth during the frenzy, pushing his personal fortune to nearly $176 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

A week of deals by Nvidia

The 62-year-old founder’s week began at Nvidia’s first developers conference in Washington and concluded in South Korea, where he shared fried chicken and beer with the heads of Samsung and Hyundai. In between, he announced numerous partnerships with companies spanning telecommunications, transportation and healthcare—including deals with Nokia and Uber.Huang announced a wide range of new partnerships at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in Washington before thousands of hardware and software developers. Highlights included a $1 billion equity stake in networking giant Nokia, plans to outfit 100,000 Uber vehicles with Nvidia technology and a cybersecurity partnership with CrowdStrike.“We have now reached our virtuous cycle, our inflection point, and this is quite extraordinary. Now, for the first time, AI is going to engage that $100 trillion global economy, ” Huang told a packed convention hall blocks from the White House, “and make it more productive, make it grow faster, make it larger.”From Washington, Huang went to South Korea, where the dealmaking continued. He announced plans to supply Samsung, Hyundai, SK Group and the South Korean government with more than 260,000 AI chips. He sealed the agreements over dinner at a Seoul chicken restaurant with Samsung Chair Jay Y Lee and Hyundai Executive Chair Chung Euisun.Finally, Nvidia’s announcement of producing chips featuring its cutting-edge Blackwell design in the US at a plant pushed the value.“The first thing that President Trump asked me for is bring manufacturing back because it’s necessary for national security,” said Huang, who has pledged to spend $500 billion over the next several years building AI infrastructure in the US. “Nine months later, we are now manufacturing in full production Blackwell in Arizona,” he said.