One chipmaker's profit last year exceeded the combined earnings of 2,000 small-cap US companies by a margin that is difficult to overstate.
Nvidia is now worth more than every small company in America, combined, and then some. As of late September 2026, the chipmaker’s market capitalization settled at approximately $5.4 trillion, outpacing the collective value of the Russell 2000 small-cap index by nearly $2 trillion.
Profit that rewrites the record books
Over the past twelve months, Nvidia generated roughly $193 billion in net income. The Russell 2000’s approximately 2,000 member companies, in aggregate, lost $13 billion over the same period.
Nvidia’s fiscal 2026 revenue hit $215.9 billion, a 65% increase year-over-year. Its data-center business alone generated $89 billion in a single quarter, a number that would rank as a sizeable annual revenue figure for most Fortune 500 companies.
Nvidia crossed the $5 trillion threshold for the first time in October 2025, joining a club that, until recently, had no members at all. It has held that altitude and climbed further since.
What the Russell 2000 gap actually tells us
The Russell 2000 is the standard benchmark for US small-cap stocks. It covers companies that are large enough to be publicly traded but small enough to be mostly ignored by institutional investors chasing mega-cap returns. These are regional banks, smaller manufacturers, mid-tier retailers, and a long tail of businesses that form the connective tissue of the American economy.
Part of the story is structural. Small-cap companies tend to carry more floating-rate debt, which became expensive as interest rates climbed. They have less pricing power than large incumbents, and they often lack the scale to absorb cost increases without margin compression. The AI boom has made the divergence starker by funneling capital and talent into a narrow band of technology companies rather than distributing it broadly.
For index investors, the implications are concrete. Passive funds tracking broad US equity benchmarks are increasingly weighted toward a handful of mega-cap names. A rough day for Nvidia moves needles in ways that a rough quarter for dozens of Russell 2000 companies simply does not.
Scale, risk, and what comes next
Nvidia’s chips are subject to US export controls that restrict sales to certain markets, and the regulatory perimeter around advanced semiconductors has been tightening rather than loosening.
For the Russell 2000 side of the equation, smaller companies with variable-rate debt benefit meaningfully from rate cuts in a way that a cash-flush mega-cap does not. If the macro environment shifts, the profitability gap could narrow without Nvidia stumbling at all.
