Apple finally overthrew Nvidia to reclaim the title of the world’s largest company by market capitalization, underscoring the dramatic degree to which the iPhone maker’s stock is clobbering the broader technology universe.
Shares of Apple rose 1% on Monday, closing at a new all-time high of $336.91. Apple currently commands a market cap of $4.93 trillion, while Nvidia’s market cap declined to $4.78 trillion as shares fell 5% on Monday.
Apple’s stock is currently outperforming the Nasdaq-100 Index by 23 percentage points so far in July, setting it up for its largest monthly outperformance since 2005, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The reshuffling between Apple and Nvidia shows that the market has grown increasingly skeptical of the capital-intensive artificial-intelligence buildout. Nvidia, as the chipmaker at the center of the AI boom, had held the No. 1 spot for over a year after overtaking Apple in May 2025. However, the company has seen its stock valuation compress in recent months. Shares of Nvidia now trade at 18.2x forward earnings, down from 25.5x at the beginning of the year.
As the pace of AI spending continues to pick up, investors have placed increased emphasis on return on investment. Last week, Alphabet increased its 2026 capex forecasts, and many anticipate that the other hyperscalers will follow suit.
Concerns about whether companies are overspending on AI have reignited following a recent report from the Wall Street Journal that said Nvidia is in talks to provide a $250 billion financial backstop for OpenAI as part of data-center project in Ohio. Investors are interpreting the potential deal as one of the biggest examples of circular financing, Jefferies sell-side analyst Jeffrey Favuzza wrote in a Monday note.
Semiconductor stocks broadly stumbled on Monday following the public listing of Chinese memory company ChangXin Memory Technologies. Investors are concerned that a competitive Chinese memory supplier could weaken the pricing power of the “Big Three” memory providers: Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix. In fact, Apple is reportedly seeking to buy DRAM from CXMT to use in its products as the company maneuvers around global memory bottlenecks.
Apple had previously drawn close to usurping Nvidia by market value earlier this month. Apple’s stock has risen 16% since the beginning of July, putting it on pace for its best monthly performance in four years.
The iPhone maker’s stock has been on a steady upward trend in 2026, even as Apple navigates a memory crunch that has forced the company to raise prices on some of its products. Apple’s iPhone sales have remained strong, allowing the company to grow its market share to 20% from 17% in the global smartphone market relative to a year before, according to a Monday note from Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.
Since the beginning of the year, Apple’s stock has risen 24% while Nvidia’s has only risen 5%.
Apple has largely sat on the sidelines of the AI spending craze while the rest of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants continue to increase their capex levels. While Apple received initial criticism for its perceived lack of an AI strategy, it’s paying off in the current market. The remaining “Magnificent Seven” stocks are all at least 15% away from their respective record all-time highs, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Comments