Harger: Nvidia hits $5 trillion valuation as layoffs sweep tech industry
Oct 30, 2025, 12:05 PM
Nvidia just became the first company in history worth five trillion dollars.
Five trillion. That’s more than the GDP of Japan. More than the entire economy of the United Kingdom. One company, making computer chips that power artificial intelligence, is now worth more than nations that have existed for centuries.
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Nvidia didn’t stumble into this. They saw the AI revolution coming and built the shovels for the gold rush. Every ChatGPT query, every AI image generator, every machine learning model runs on their hardware. They bet everything on a future where computers would need to think, and they were right.
Wall Street is throwing a party. The stock split. The records broken. The analysts are upgrading their price targets. Five trillion dollars! American innovation at its finest.
Meanwhile, Amazon announced 14,000 job cuts this week. Many right here in our backyard. Fourteen thousand people are wondering if their jobs are gone. And those are just the ones we know about. More cuts are coming.
You see the disconnect? We’re celebrating the company that builds the AI hardware while the people whose jobs AI will replace are updating their resumes. We built the machines that think, and we’re cheering the stock price while they learn to do our jobs.
We used to think automation would take factory jobs and leave the office workers alone. Wrong. AI is coming for the spreadsheet jockeys, the middle managers, the analysts, the writers. If your job involves sitting at a computer and thinking, well, computers can think now. And they don’t need health insurance.
I’m not anti-profit. I’m not even anti-Nvidia. They took risks, they innovated, and they deserve rewards. But when one company controls all the computer chips that make AI work, we should probably pay attention. This is like if one company owned all the railroads during the Industrial Revolution. Or all the oil wells. Or all the phone lines. Oh, wait.
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Actually, we’ve been here before
Remember when Boeing was Seattle’s crown jewel? When Microsoft could do no wrong? The concentration of power feels great when the stock is rising. It feels different when that single point of failure actually fails.
We keep hearing AI will make life easier, more productive, more efficient. So far, it’s mostly made a handful of people beyond wealthy, while everyone else worries about their mortgage. Nvidia’s CEO is worth over $100 billion. The software engineer in Redmond is wondering if AI can code better than she can. The customer service rep in Bellevue knows AI can already do his job.
I’ve been a tech worker. Many of my friends are in the industry. Tech workers with families, mortgages, and kids in school. They’re watching Nvidia’s valuation climb and their own job security crumble. They’re not celebrating the five trillion. They’re wondering what happens when the AI they helped build no longer needs them.
The irony is perfect. We created machines that can think, so we wouldn’t have to work as hard. Now those machines are making a handful of people unimaginably rich while the rest of us work harder just to stay relevant.
We built thinking machines to solve our problems. Instead, they’re solving us right out of our jobs.
Five trillion dollars says this is just the beginning, 14,000 pink slips agree.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
