Nvidia Hits Record $5.7 Trillion Market Cap on Oct. 2, 2026

Nvidia's market value climbed to a record $5.7 trillion on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, after the chipmaker's shares closed at an all-time high for the first time since May. Two catalysts drove the move: a newly expanded $150 billion stock buyback program and a weak September jobs report that cut the odds of another Federal Reserve interest-rate increase this year.

What happened to Nvidia's stock on Friday

The stock climbed to $237.88 in early trading after opening at $236.06, surpassing its previous intraday record of $235.54. A separate pricing feed described the new all-time high as $237.87, driven by buyback, analyst upgrade, and AI demand, a one-cent difference likely reflecting different snapshot times during the session. Nvidia stock closed at an all-time high on Friday for the first time since May, capping a sustained comeback that has lifted the chipmaker's total market value to around $5.7 trillion, according to qz.com. Nvidia stock has gained about 27% this year, the outlet reported, putting Friday's move in the context of a longer rally rather than a single-day spike.

Why now: a record buyback and a softer labor market

The first catalyst was corporate, not macroeconomic. Nvidia's Board of Directors authorized a $150 billion increase to its share repurchase program, bringing the total to $235 billion, and the announcement was the largest single stock buyback authorization in U.S. corporate history. A buyback authorization is a ceiling on how much a company's board has approved for repurchasing its own shares; it is not a commitment to spend that full amount immediately, and the pace of actual purchases determines the effect on share count and earnings per share.

The second catalyst was a government data release. The U.S. economy added only 29,000 jobs in September, below estimates for a gain of more than 80,000, and that miss changed how traders price the odds of a Fed rate move. CME's FedWatch tool, based on trading in 30-day interest rate futures, showed only a 17% chance that the Fed increases rates by a quarter percentage point in October, down from odds close to 36% a week earlier. FedWatch odds are a real-time, model-based estimate built from futures prices, not a Fed announcement or a guarantee of what the central bank will do.

The key figures

How this compares with Nvidia's last milestone

Nvidia became the first public company to pass the $5 trillion market cap milestone roughly eleven months earlier, on Oct. 29, 2025, when shares rose more than 5.6% to as much as $212.19. The jump from $5 trillion to $5.7 trillion over that period was not a steady climb: multiple outlets describe Friday's close as the stock's first record since May, meaning the gain reflects a round trip through a sustained pullback rather than uninterrupted gains. Readers comparing the two milestones should note both are market-capitalization figures tied to a specific share price and share count on a given day, not revenue, profit or cash-flow measures.

What's unresolved and what comes next

The buyback authorization is a spending ceiling, not a completed purchase; how much of the $235 billion Nvidia actually spends, and over what period within its fiscal 2028 window, has not yet been reported. On the macro side, the Federal Reserve is set to announce its next decision on interest rates at the conclusion of a two-day policy meeting on Oct. 28, which will be the next test of whether the September jobs miss was a one-month blip or the start of a trend that shifts Fed policy. Separately, Nvidia expects its newer Rubin platform to account for 20% of data-center revenue in the third quarter of its fiscal 2027, results it will report in November, a figure that will show whether the demand assumptions behind this week's buyback are holding up.