Apple Briefly Passes Nvidia as Worlds Most Valuable Company Before Nvidia Reclaims Lead

Attendees watch the keynote presentation during the Apple WWDC at Apple Park in Cupertino, Calif., on June 8, 2026. Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesApple briefly overtook Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company on July 17, with a market cap of over $4.9 trillion, before Nvidia retook the throne at closing.Shares of Apple peaked in premarket trading early Friday morning and its market cap climbed as high as $4.92 trillion during official market hours, before falling to $4.90 trillion at the trading day’s close on a 0.1 percent gain.Apple has focused on generative AI through its Apple Intelligence, which on July 15, received approval through China’s cyberspace regulator to use on iPhones in China. Shares of Apple increased 4 percent the next day.Google’s parent company Alphabet trails Apple and Nvidia with $4.2 trillion in market cap.Nvidia experienced a sell-off in the premarket and fell as much as 3.8 percent after opening until it climbed back after Apple momentarily passed it. Nvidia closed Friday with a 2.2 percent loss and a market cap of $4.91 trillion.Nvidia had held the throne for over a year, since it passed Microsoft in June last year to become the most valuable company.The Santa Clara, California-based chip company continued to break milestones, becoming the first company to hit a $4 trillion market cap in July 2025 and the first to record a $5 trillion market cap in October that year.Once Wall Street’s hottest stock, the company is up over 17 percent in the last year but down about 14 percent from its peak in May.The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 2.9 percent last week, with chip-makers: Intel, AMD, and Nvidia down 6.12 percent, 3.52 percent, and 4.21 percent respectively.Other sectors also continue to benefit massively from AI demand, including cybersecurity and its giants Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike, which have jumped over 113 percent and 91 percent respectively in the last three months.“The latest advancements at the AI frontier have increased the level of urgency around cybersecurity, and redefined the shape of the industry for the coming years,” Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said in the company’s latest earnings report, which showed revenue jumped to approximately $3 billion, a 31 percent gain compared to the same period last year.Recently, large memory chip-makers have become the biggest winners in the semiconductor industry, such as Micron and Samsung, which are up 649 percent and 260 percent respectively in the last year, despite both experiencing significant sell-offs recently.Last week, South Korea memory-chip maker SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion as it listed on the Nasdaq.Reuters contributed to this article.