Silver quietly crashes Nvidia's party

If you’re used to thinking of silver as gold’s quieter cousin, seeing it mentioned in the same breath as Nvidia can feel surreal. For most of the last decade, metals didn’t live anywhere near the same hype cycle as AI chips or megacap tech stocks.

That changed fast in late 2025. According to NDTV Profit, silver’s total market value surged toward roughly $4.7 trillion after spot prices ripped above $80 an ounce, briefly putting it level with or even ahead of Nvidia’s roughly $4.6 trillion market cap on some measures. The Economic Times described silver “chasing Nvidia’s market value,” noting that a metal that spent years underperforming suddenly sat in the same conversation as the market’s AI champion.

That surprise is exactly why this matters to you. At the portfolio level, silver is no longer just an inflation hedge buried in a commodities sleeve; it’s a direct competitor for the same marginal dollar that used to go reflexively into the hottest growth stock you could find.
Watcher.Guru captured the shock in a viral social post flagged by several outlets, highlighting a graphic that showed silver overtaking Nvidia as the world’s second‑largest asset by market cap after gold. Longtime gold advocate Peter Schiff also noted silver’s rise in a post on X, telling his followers that the metal is a buy.

Why silver moved this far, this fast

To understand why silver has become Nvidia’s unexpected rival, you have to look at what’s driving the metal’s price in 2025. It’s not just fear or speculation; it’s a convergence of industrial demand, monetary demand, and years of underpricing catching up all at once.

According to Moneycontrol, silver’s market cap crossed $4.2 trillion as prices on Comex jumped past $75 per ounce and then accelerated toward $80, putting it on track to surpass Nvidia's market cap if the rally continued. Analysts quoted by the site argued, "The way silver is moving, it is likely to be the second-most valued asset, surpassing NVIDIA,” pointing to a broken price‑discovery system and surging demand from both investors and industry.​

Hindustan Times, summarizing bullion market commentary, noted that roughly half of annual silver demand now comes from industry, driven by solar panels, EVs, electronics, and high‑efficiency power systems. That industrial backbone means silver is not just a static store of value; it’s tied to the same electrification and data‑center buildout helping Nvidia grow. You’re effectively seeing two sides of the same macro coin: AI chips on one side, conductive metal on the other.

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Longbridge highlighted that in 2025, precious metals actually outperformed Big Tech, with gold up around 70% and silver up more than 140%, while megacap tech, including Nvidia, delivered strong but more modest returns. As that report put it, “precious metals joined Nvidia and Apple at the top of global assets,” turning what used to be a niche play into a core macro trade.

The silver–Nvidia decision you’re really making

When you decide how much to put into Nvidia today, you’re not just picking a stock. You’re choosing a side in a bigger debate about what will matter more over the next decade.

On one side, Nvidia is the purest play on AI infrastructure. It sells the GPUs, networking gear, and software stack that power the training and deployment of large models, agents, and AI‑driven services. The bull case is familiar: as AI seeps into every corner of the economy, Nvidia’s addressable market grows, and even if competitors like AMD, Google, and Amazon chip away at share, the overall pie keeps expanding.

Related: What’s next for Nvidia stock in 2026

On the other side, silver is becoming the metal of the transition. It benefits when the world builds more solar, more EVs, more grids, and more advanced electronics, all of which are needed if AI is going to scale in the real world.

On top of that industrial demand, silver is now a vehicle for investors worried about inflation, debt, and currency debasement. News18 quoted JM Financial’s Pranav Mer tying silver’s spike directly to “strong industrial demand from new-age sectors, relatively cheap pricing compared to gold, and a sharp rally in the industrial metals after [U.S.] tariff announcements,” arguing that silver’s return profile looked like “gold on steroids” for investors willing to stomach volatility.

That’s exactly the kind of pitch that competes with Nvidia in your mind when you think, “Where is my next $1,000 better deployed?”

How traders and commentators are framing the fight

Social media has been quick to turn this into a scoreboard. Watcher.Guru and others pushed viral graphics showing silver leapfrogging Nvidia as the world’s second‑largest asset by market cap after gold, a framing that made the story impossible for Nvidia holders to ignore.

Related: Veteran analyst issues surprise gold price target for 2026

Some commentators have leaned into the “hard assets vs. AI paper wealth” theme. An analysis on Investing.com with the headline “Silver Joins Gold, Nvidia, and Apple at the Top of Global Assets” called 2025 “the year precious metals crashed the megacap party,” highlighting how silver and gold “out‑earned” many tech leaders on a total‑return basis.

Stocktwits’ coverage used similar language, noting that “gold and silver surged past Big Tech in 2025, challenging the assumption that the only way to play the future is through AI and software.”

That narrative matters because it directly influences how retail traders and some institutions perceive diversification. Instead of a portfolio built around “Nvidia plus FAANG,” you’re seeing more conversations about “Nvidia plus metals,” or even “metals instead of more AI exposure,” especially among investors who feel late to the AI party.

How you can position around Nvidia and silver

You don’t have to choose a winner in some dramatic “AI vs. metal” showdown. What you need is a portfolio that reflects your risk tolerance, your time horizon, and your view on how the next decade of growth and inflation plays out.

For many everyday investors, that can mean:

• Keeping Nvidia (or other AI leaders) as your high‑growth, high‑beta bet on innovation and earnings expansion.
• Using silver through ETFs, miners, or physically backed products as a volatile but potentially powerful hedge on inflation, deficits, and the very energy transition AI depends on.
• Rebalancing periodically so that a runaway winner doesn’t quietly take on more risk in your portfolio than you intended.

That “energy transition” piece is where silver has suddenly grabbed center stage. In a post on X, Elon Musk responded to a thread about silver’s price spike and supply strain by warning,

Coming from the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, that’s less a meme and more a tell: AI data centers, EVs, and solar panels all lean heavily on a metal that can’t be conjured out of thin air.

According to Moneycontrol and The Economic Times, analysts expect silver’s path from here to be anything but smooth, with high volatility likely as speculative flows come and go and macro data reset expectations for rates and growth. Nvidia faces its own set of unknowns: competition, regulation, export controls, and the risk that AI spending doesn’t stay on today’s steep trajectory forever.

When you step back, that’s why the “Nvidia versus silver” frame is so useful. Nvidia’s biggest rival isn’t another AI company fighting over benchmarks; it’s a grey metal that has quietly reminded the market that physical scarcity, energy, and hard assets still matter. 

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