Apple Reclaims Top Market Cap Spot From Nvidia After 15 Months

Apple Sidesteps AI Spending Race, Emerging as Wall Street’s New Defensive Play

Apple has reclaimed the title of the world’s most valuable company from Nvidia after 15 months. The move reflects a market reassessment of Apple’s strategy of limiting its investment burden even as rivals pour huge sums into AI chips and data centers. On Wall Street, Apple is increasingly being cast as a new defensive stock for the AI era.

Apple shares rose 1.17% to $336.91 at the close of regular trading on July 27, lifting its market capitalization to $4.948 trillion. That put it back atop the global market-value rankings. Nvidia, which had held the No. 1 spot since June 2025, fell about 5% to $196.51, leaving its market capitalization at $4.756 trillion.

Apple previously lost the top spot to Microsoft in April 2025 as concerns mounted that Donald Trump’s proposed “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs would directly hit the company and criticism grew over its slow adoption of AI. About two months later, Microsoft in turn ceded the lead to Nvidia as demand for AI semiconductors surged.

Nvidia then grew at breakneck speed. It crossed the $4 trillion market-cap mark in July 2025 and topped $5 trillion for the first time in October 2025. Its valuation later reached a record $5.7 trillion on May 14, 2026, before sliding again.

Apple, long branded the slowest of Big Tech in the AI shift, has gained more than 19% this month alone. That stands in contrast with the pullback in AI chipmakers and data-center-related stocks over the same period. Investors are effectively reappraising Apple’s relatively restrained AI spending as a strength.

While hyperscalers are spending heavily to secure data centers and AI chips, Apple has chosen to lean on external AI models and its existing device ecosystem instead of building its own infrastructure.

At the same time, concerns are resurfacing around Nvidia over what critics describe as “circular finance” in the AI industry. On July 26, Nvidia said it would provide payment guarantees of up to $250 billion to support OpenAI’s lease of a massive data center. That arrangement — in which an AI chip supplier finances a major customer that then buys the supplier’s chips — has raised warnings that AI demand may be overstated.

Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, told Yahoo Finance that Apple was once criticized for not investing more heavily in AI, but that stance helped it avoid some of the pitfalls associated with capital spending.

Daniel Newman, chief executive officer of the Futurum Group, told The New York Times that investors view AI stocks as volatile, while Apple is treated almost like owning the index itself. In his view, the company is seen as a kind of safe-haven asset.

The shift in the rankings comes about a month before Apple’s planned chief executive transition. Tim Cook is set to step down as CEO in September and become executive chairman, while John Ternus, the senior vice president who has led the hardware division, will take over the company.

Kang Kyung-ju, Hankyung.com reporter, qurasoha@hankyung.com