Apple Overtakes Nvidia as World’s Most Valuable Company After AI Selloff
Apple closed at a $4.9 trillion valuation as Nvidia slid almost 5% to $4.8 trillion — a flight to safety that rewards the one giant that skipped the AI capex race.
In Brief
- Apple stock rose more than 1% Monday to a $4.9 trillion market valuation while Nvidia fell almost 5% to $4.8 trillion, handing Apple the most-valuable-company crown per Bloomberg data cited by the NYT
- The reversal comes roughly two years after Apple lost the title, and reflects investor rotation away from volatile AI trades toward Apple’s capital discipline
- Apple has skipped the AI capex race entirely, using Google’s models and cloud services while peers spend hundreds of billions on data centers
Apple overtook Nvidia on Monday to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, about two years after it lost the crown, The New York Times reports. Apple’s stock finished the day up more than 1 percent for a market valuation of $4.9 trillion, while Nvidia’s stock — pressured by AI spending concerns — fell almost 5 percent to a $4.8 trillion market cap, according to Bloomberg figures cited by the Times.
The ascent was as much a result of the Nvidia selloff as an endorsement of Apple. Stocks slid earlier this month amid increasing concerns about AI spending and growing competition from China, and with questions mounting over whether the technology industry’s next big bet will pay off, investors appear to be returning to a safer one.
“Apple is a little bit of a flight to safety,” Daniel Newman, chief executive of technology analysis firm Futurum Group, told the Times. “People see the A.I. trade is volatile, and they see Apple as almost like owning an index.”
Apple’s most valuable company crown rewards sitting out the AI race
The irony is thick: the company that skipped the AI arms race just beat the company that armed it. In the four years since ChatGPT kicked off the boom, Nvidia’s market valuation ballooned more than tenfold on demand for its GPUs. Apple, meanwhile, lost the top spot to Microsoft in 2024 after more than a decade leading the market, as investors questioned its absence from AI.
Unlike its peers spending hundreds of billions of dollars building their own models and data centers stuffed with Nvidia chips, Apple is not overhauling itself around AI — it uses AI models and cloud computing services from Google for its own products. That distinction, punished during the boom, is being rewarded as the market sours on capex: Thursday’s tech rout wiped $797 billion off the largest U.S. technology stocks, per CoinDesk, and the AI-spending skepticism has kept pressure on chipmakers since.
Apple’s restraint wasn’t wholly by design, the Times notes. Its first attempt to weave AI through its devices and upgrade Siri in 2024 was plagued by delays and quality problems, forcing it to postpone the technology. In June, Apple reintroduced an improved Siri, saying it would arrive this year.
A CEO transition under a returned crown
The milestone lands mid-handoff, as Apple transitions from longtime chief executive Tim Cook to John Ternus, most recently its head of hardware engineering. Ternus told analysts in April he planned to maintain the financial discipline that defined Cook’s tenure — a signal the company won’t suddenly join the capex race.
Apple has also been explicit about its philosophical distance from rivals. “Some appear to be racing forward, seemingly pursuing A.I. for the sake of A.I., without clear regard for the people — all of us — that it’s ultimately meant to serve,” software engineering chief Craig Federighi said in June.
The Times cautions Apple’s reign could be short-lived — Nvidia remains one strong earnings report away from reclaiming the top. But Monday’s flip is a marker: for the first time since the AI boom began, the market’s most valuable company is the one that spent the least chasing it.
FAQ
Why did Apple pass Nvidia in market value?
Apple stock rose over 1% Monday to a $4.9 trillion valuation while Nvidia fell almost 5% to $4.8 trillion on AI spending concerns, according to Bloomberg data cited by The New York Times.
When did Apple last hold the most-valuable-company title?
Apple lost the crown in 2024 to Microsoft after more than a decade at the top, making Monday’s reclaim roughly a two-year round trip.
How does Apple’s AI strategy differ from its rivals?
Apple is not building frontier models or massive data centers — it uses Google’s AI models and cloud services for its products while maintaining the financial discipline of the Cook era.
