Nvidia passed Apple in market cap on Wednesday as investors continue betting on the chipmaker behind the artificial intelligence boom. It is now the second-most valuable public company, behind Microsoft. Nvidia also hit a $3 trillion market cap milestone on Wednesday after shares rose over 5%. At market close, Nvidia had a market value of $3.019 trillion, versus Apple’s, which stood at $2.99 trillion. Microsoft is the most valuable publicly traded company, with a market cap of $3.15 trillion, as of Wednesday. Nvidia shares have risen more than 24% since the company reported first-quarter earnings in May and have been on a tear since last year. The company has an estimated 80% market share in AI chips for data centers, which are attracting billions of dollars in spending from big cloud vendors. Investors are also becoming more comfortable that Nvidia’s huge growth in sales to a handful of cloud companies can persist. For the most recent quarter, revenue in its…
