This report has been compiled by Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters.

The AI-driven market has repeatedly reshuffled the ranks of the world's most valuable companies over the past year.

Published On 17 Jul 202617 Jul 2026

Apple has surpassed chipmaker Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company as artificial intelligence-driven market pressures weigh on investors.

Apple is now worth $4.88 trillion compared with Nvidia’s $4.86 trillion, following a 3.5 percent decline in Nvidia’s market value. The milestone marks the first time the Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has held the top spot in more than a year.

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Nvidia had previously occupied the top spot after crossing the $5 trillion market valuation threshold in October.

Last month, Apple unveiled a revamped version of its assistant, Siri AI, which enables the personal assistant to better understand the personal context of users’ questions, access real-time information from the Web, and perform more complex tasks on behalf of users.

“Market sentiment has shifted from rewarding model makers, then to semis, and now on to those companies that can turn compute into experiences and outcomes the customer will pay for, thus driving corporate earnings,” Michael Monaghan, founder of Founder ETFs, told Al Jazeera.

“Apple investors first questioned Apple’s lower AI spend, but now have treated Apple’s lower AI capital expenditure as an advantage, with the bull case being that Apple benefits from consumer AI without spending at cloud-infrastructure scale.”

The stock's rise comes ahead of Apple's third-quarter earnings report, due on July 30, following a forecast of 14 to 17 percent sales growth last quarter.

Apple has long trailed competitors in the AI space and only publicly debuted its enhanced Siri last week. However, analysts believe the trove of personal data stored on the typical iPhone could become a major advantage for the company’s AI ambitions.

“This is a natural extension of Apple Founder Steve Jobs’ thinking of starting with the customer experience and working backwards to the technology needed to deliver the experience,” Monaghan added.

It comes as CEO Tim Cook is set to hand over the reins of the tech giant to John Ternus in September. Ternus has served as Apple’s head of hardware engineering since 2021.

Pressure on Nvidia comes amid increased competition in the semiconductor industry, with competitors such as Micron crossing the $1 trillion market valuation in May and South Korea’s SK Hynix joining the Nasdaq in May.

“The new entrants to the market could spread out the focus away from the pure Magnificent Seven names into a wider number of names,” Benjamin Hall, vice president of alpha research at Segal Marco Advisors, told the Reuters news agency.

Despite Apple’s surge, the broader market trended downward. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1.6 percent in midday trading, while the S&P 500 fell 0.9 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.25 percent from Friday’s market open.

Apple's strength lies in its massive user base and the personal data stored on iPhones, which analysts see as a competitive advantage in AI. The upcoming earnings will test whether the market's renewed confidence is justified, especially as investors eye the revamped Siri's impact on revenue. Nvidia's slight dip underscores how quickly investor sentiment can shift amid evolving AI spending priorities.