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Nvidia (NVDA) leaped back into the $3 trillion club on Tuesday as its stock shot up following the announcement of a major deal with a state-backed Saudi Arabian AI company.

Nvidia shares rose nearly 6% to close just under $130. The gains put Nvidia’s market capitalization at nearly $3.2 trillion, more than every other U.S. company aside from Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL).

Nvidia on Tuesday announced a partnership with Humain, an AI subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Nvidia will sell Humain “several hundred thousand” advanced GPUs over the next five years, starting with an AI supercomputer powered by 18,000 GB300 chips. The announcement coincided with the beginning of President Trump’s four-day tour through the Middle East, the first major international trip of his second term.

Nvidia became only the third U.S. company to reach a $3 trillion market value in June 2024. The AI chipmaker's path to that milestone looked very different than the two companies that preceded it, Microsoft and Apple. Its shares began a near-constant $3 trillion ascent in late 2022 when the release of ChatGPT sparked the generative AI boom.

It was around the time Nvidia topped $3 trillion that the stock’s meteoric rise gave way to a more volatile sideways drift. Still, it competed with Apple and Microsoft for the title of the world’s most valuable company throughout the remainder of the year before its market cap topped out at about $3.66 trillion in early January.

The stock has been on a wild ride since. The company lost about $1.3 trillion in value between early January and early April as Wall Street questioned both the economics of AI and how President Trump’s trade war with China would affect sales. The stock has rebounded in the last month, driven higher by solid earnings reports from big tech and the White House’s softened stance on tariffs. Nvidia is set to report its first-quarter results later this month, on May 28.

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