ChatGPT's soaring popularity has added $5 billion to the wealth of Nvidia's founder as Wall Street bets on AI boom for the chipmaker

  • OpenAI’s popular language tool, ChatGPT, has spurred investors to bet on AI, which has led them to chip companies like Nvidia. 
  • Nvidia’s cofounder, Jensen Huang, has seen his wealth grow by $5 billion so far this year, Bloomberg data shows.
  • Nvidia has emerged as a dominant name in powering AI applications in cars and robots.

With the rise of OpenAI’s language tool, ChatGPT, Wall Street traders are increasingly betting on chip-makers like Nvidia, which has climbed more than 34% this month.

As a result, CEO Jensen Huang, who cofounded the company in 1993, has seen his wealth balloon by more than a third to $18.9 billion. 

According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, the $5.1 billion gain gives Huang the largest percentage gain to his net-worth among US billionaires so far this year. 

The 59-year-old Taiwanese immigrant is coming off a less memorable year, as he was among other tech moguls who lost big money, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

Microsoft this month reportedly invested $10 billion into ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, which has fueled interest in the artificial intelligence space overall. The bot has shown a capacity for a range of tasks such as writing stock stories, layoff emails, and even dating-app messages.

Nvidia’s role as a dominant player in the chip-making space has made it an attractive bet as Wall Street looks to ride the AI trend.

After starting initially with graphics chips used in video games, the company is now involved in making chips for AI applications ranging from autonomous vehicles to robots. 

Last week, Citi strategists estimated that ChatGPT’s growth could result in sales of $3 billion to $11 billion for Nvidia over the course of a year, per Bloomberg. 

Analysts at Bank of America and Wells Fargo have also flagged Nvidia recently as a potential winner from the hype around AI that ChatGPT has generated.

Speaking at an event in Stockholm last week, Huang warned of the potential challenges AI could bring to broader society. 

“What is the social norm for using it?” he said, per Bloomberg. “What are the legal norms? Everything is evolving now.”