by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:

The much-hyped artificial intelligence chipmaker, Nvidia (ticker NVDA), reached a market cap of $3 trillion on Thursday, beating out Apple as the second most valuable company, just behind Microsoft. This morning, Nvidia’s 10-for-1 stock split will become effective, reducing its share price to, ideally, entice more retail investors.

Year-to-date, Nvidia’s stock price is up 144 percent through the closing bell on Friday.

The company was founded on April 5, 1993 and lived the bulk of its existence in obscurity until a New York Times article appeared on September 1, 2017 with this headline: “Why a 24-Year-Old Chipmaker Is One of Tech’s Hot Prospects.”