NVIDIA is a 'little-known brand' after hitting $3.3T market cap, according to consulting firm

NVIDIA is a "little-known brand" even though it's an absolute monster in more ways than one, at least in a new report from CNBC and consulting firm Interbrand.

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Last week, NVIDIA hit a record $3.3 trillion market cap, making it the world's biggest company by market cap, passing US tech leaders Apple and Microsoft. Even with that in their back post, NVIDIA "doesn't even cracK' the top 100 most iconic names on Interbrand -- a consulting firm -- and its most recent list, which includes companies like McDonald's, Amazon, Tesla, Google, Starbucks, Disney, Netflix, and others.

AI is everywhere and will continue to penetrate every market on the planet over the years... NVIDIA leads that in the AI GPU department, with an estimated 80%+ of the AI chip market share. Not only that, but NVIDIA's annual revenue growth has been exceeding 200% in the last three quarters and with no signs of slowing down, with fiscal 2025 revenue expected to nearly double from a year ago to over $120 billion.

Interbrand's top 10 global brands are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google in the top four spots, with South Korean electronics giant Samsung in 5th. Toyota, Mercedes-Benz BMW, Coca-Cola, and Nike rounding out the top 10 biggest brands in the world according to Interbrand.

• Read more: NVIDIA becomes the most valuable company in the world with $3.33 trillion market cap
• Read more: NVIDIA hits record-breaking $3 trillion market cap, each NVIDIA employee is worth over $100M
• Read more: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says company's $100 billion revenue is mostly manufactured in Taiwan

Greg Silverman, Interbrand's global director of brand economics, said in an email to CNBC: "As a product company recently moving onto a global stage, NVIDIA has not had time, nor has it dedicated resources, to change its role of brand and strengthen its brand to protect future revenue". One of the risks for NVIDIA, is the "weak brand strength will limit how valuable it will be, despite its market cap heights", added Silverman.

In other rankings, we've got Kantar BrandZ's latest list of the top 100 most valuable global brands, with NVIDIA coming in 6th position, which is 18 places higher than the survey prior to this. Marc Glovsky, senior brand strategist at Kantar, told CNBC: "NVIDIA is pound for pound as relevant and meaningful to that B2B buyer that's looking to make big, large purchases in-house for their company as Apple is to the consumer who's buying an iPad or a Mac".

If you look at it from another perspective, unlike Intel and AMD which show their brands on countless products (their own processors, graphics cards, chipsets, marketing, as well as AMD having semi-custom designs inside of the Xbox and PlayStation consoles), then NVIDIA is nowhere near as consumer-facing.

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NVIDIA is inside of the Nintendo Switch, but most people -- and many gamers -- don't know that. It's invisible, but Nintendo has sold over 140 million Switch units since its release. That is a lot of NVIDIA chips inside of one of the most popular consoles of all time.

Another fact is that the GeForce business is now just a side hustle for NVIDIA, as AI and HPC markets have absolutely ballooned over the years. The gaming side of NVIDIA's business only accounted for $2.6 billion of its revenue in its latest quarter, just 10% of its total sales.

NVIDIA has been one of the biggest brands in tech since its inception in 1999, personally my online handle and even my Twitter (sigh, X) handle is 'anthony256' named after the world's first GPU: the NVIDIA GeForce 256. NVIDIA will keep on truckin', as it doesn't need to be on any brand list to know its worth... that recent $3.33 trillion valuation and the absolute AI GPU dominator says it all... on top of having the best graphics cards on the market.