Apple reclaimed its position as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company on Tuesday, surpassing Nvidia with a market capitalization that briefly topped trillion during trading, according to market data.
The iPhone maker’s shares rose more than 2 percent in afternoon trading, pushing its market value past Nvidia’s as investors rotated out of high-flying artificial intelligence chip stocks and into consumer technology names. Apple closed the session with a market capitalization of approximately .9 trillion, overtaking Nvidia’s .7 trillion valuation.
The shift marks a reversal from recent months when Nvidia had dominated the market-cap rankings amid surging demand for its AI-focused graphics processors. Nvidia’s chips have become essential infrastructure for data centers running large language models and other generative AI workloads, propelling the company’s stock more than 200 percent over the past two years.
Analysts at several major investment banks this week downgraded their ratings on semiconductor stocks, citing concerns that AI-related capital spending may be peaking. A note from Morgan Stanley warned that “the AI investment cycle may be entering a more mature phase,” prompting profit-taking in chipmakers.
Apple, by contrast, has benefited from renewed optimism around its AI strategy following announcements at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The company unveiled its “Apple Intelligence” platform, which integrates generative AI features directly into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Investors view the initiative as a catalyst for a new iPhone upgrade cycle.
“Apple’s AI story is different from Nvidia’s — it is about consumer adoption rather than data-center buildout,” said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “The market is rewarding Apple for having a clear and profitable path to monetize AI through its existing ecosystem.”
The company also reported better-than-expected services revenue in its most recent quarterly earnings, with the App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud subscriptions all showing double-digit growth. Services now account for more than 25 percent of Apple’s total revenue, providing a steady stream of high-margin income.
Apple’s supply chain has also shown signs of stabilization after years of pandemic-related disruptions and geopolitical tensions affecting manufacturing in China. The company continues to diversify production, with expanded assembly operations in India and Vietnam.
Nvidia, meanwhile, faces mounting competition from custom chip designs developed by major cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. These companies are designing their own AI accelerators to reduce reliance on Nvidia’s premium-priced GPUs.
Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress acknowledged during a recent investor call that “the competitive landscape is evolving,” though she maintained that Nvidia’s full-stack software platform CUDA gives it a durable advantage.
Market cap rankings remain fluid. Apple first became the first US company to close above trillion in June 2023 and became the first to top trillion in early 2024. It held the most-valuable title until mid-2025, when Nvidia’s AI-driven rally propelled it to the top spot.
The latest flip underscores the volatility in tech markets as Wall Street debates the sustainability of AI-driven valuations.