X vs. Nvidia: A tale of two tech reputations
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Americans' opinion of Elon Musk's social media platform X has fallen to a new low, according to the sixth annual Axios/Harris Poll 100 — while AI chipmaker Nvidia, in its first appearance on the list, snagged the number one position.
Why it matters: Social media companies overall have fallen behind the rest of Big Tech both in terms of their value to investors and public perception scores over the past year.
- Controversial content moderation policies, the pervasiveness of misinformation, privacy and security scandals and leadership personalities have all played a role in diminishing social platforms' trust with users and advertisers.
Stunning stat: Among 100 corporations, only the Trump Organization ranked lower than X in the reputation study, based on the views of thousands of people surveyed at the start of this year.
Meanwhile, Nvidia — whose advanced semiconductors are driving the generative-AI revolution — has seen an explosion in both profits and market value.
- Most consumers don't directly use Nvidia's products and couldn't tell you what exactly they do.
- Despite that, or maybe because of it, the firm has arrived on the public stage with a golden glow.
By the numbers: Meta now sits at a market cap of $1.2 trillion, compared to Microsoft's $3.2 trillion, Apple's $2.9 trillion and Nvidia's $2.6 trillion.
- X, at around $12.5 billion in value, is worth 71.5% less than when it was still known as Twitter, according to Fidelity's latest disclosure about its shares. Newly public Reddit is worth just a fraction of its peers at about $9 billion.
Meanwhile, social media firms' reputation scores in the Axios/Harris Poll sit at 59.6 for Meta, 58.8 for X and 65 for Reddit.
- Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Tesla are all firmly in the 70s.
- Nvidia's score of 81.2 earned it the number one spot on the list.
The big picture: Tech's reputation among Americans has remained relatively consistent over the past few years, with strength in enterprise brands like Nvidia and Microsoft offsetting reputation declines among social media firms.
- Specifically, Americans appear to trust Nvidia and Microsoft on AI over OpenAI, which also debuted on the list this year — but at number 68, with a reputation score of 71.8.
Our thought bubble: There's a significant gap between Microsoft (at a 77.5 score and rank 18) and OpenAI (at a 71.8 score and rank 68), suggesting that the public sees them as substantially different outfits rather than a tightly-connected alliance.
What we're watching: Churning out any old AI product won't help a company's reputation by itself.
- The public seems much more likely to grade a business higher if it's produced a proven product, according to the results.
- For example, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet have a 20% score edge over Meta, which recently launched chatbots in Instagram and Facebook.
- "Meta wants to be an AI company but isn't being given credit for it yet," the study concludes.
Go deeper: Full results and poll methodology
Axios' Sara Fischer contributed to this report.
