Apple has regained its place over Nvidia as the most valuable public company
Apple on Monday overtook chip maker Nvidia to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, roughly two years after it lost the crown.
The company’s rise was both a result of Nvidia’s stock selloff and investor support. Apple’s share price ended the day up more than 1 percent, giving it a market valuation of $4.9 trillion. However, dragged down by spending concerns, Nvidia shares fell nearly 5 percent, giving it a market capitalization of $4.8 trillion, according to Bloomberg.
Apple has sat on the sidelines of the artificial intelligence race for most of the past four years, leading to more frequent questions from investors about its plans. In 2024, after more than ten years at the top of the stock market, it lost the crown of the most valuable company to Microsoft.
While Apple’s reign in the stock market may have been short-lived, it has returned to the top as investors reevaluate AI. As questions mount over whether the tech industry’s next big bet will pay off, investors appear to be returning to safe bets.
“Apple is a bit of a flight to safety,” said Daniel Newman, chief executive of the Futurum Group, a technology analysis firm. “People see the AI business as volatile and see Apple as almost owning the index,” he added.
In the four years since OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot and started the artificial intelligence boom, Nvidia’s market valuation has increased more than tenfold. Demand for the chips, known as graphics processing units, has soared. They are key components for AI development and operation, but there are growing concerns about the costs associated with AI development.
Unlike the rest of the tech industry, Apple isn’t reinventing itself around AI. Its fellow tech giants are spending hundreds of billions of dollars making their own version of the technology and building data centers that contain Nvidia chips. However, Apple uses Google’s artificial intelligence models and cloud computing services for its own products.
Apple has signaled it will continue to shun the wasteful ways of its peers even as the company transitions from Tim Cook, its longtime CEO, to John Ternus, most recently head of hardware engineering. On a call with analysts and investors in April, Mr. Ternus said he planned to maintain the financial discipline that defined Mr. Cook’s tenure at Apple.
The company’s long-term absence from AI wasn’t entirely intentional. It first attempted to weave the technology through its devices and upgrade its Siri digital assistant in 2024. However, these efforts were plagued by delays and quality issues, culminating in the company delaying the release of the new technology until it could be improved.
In June, Apple reintroduced an improved version of Siri that it said would arrive later this year. At the time, the company argued that its approach to AI was different from that of its peers in Silicon Valley.
“Some seem to be racing ahead, seemingly pursuing AI for AI’s sake, with no clear regard for the people — all of us — that it is ultimately meant to serve,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, said in June.