On Monday, Apple overtook Nvidia to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. With 1 percent increase in the company’s shares, its market capitalization increased to approximately $4.95 trillion.
Nvidia shares fell 4.99 percent during the session, bringing the AI chipmaker’s valuation to around $4.77 trillion. Due to this, the tough competition that was going on between the two companies this month has increased further.
Apple briefly overtook Nvidia on July 17, when the two companies were valued at $4.88 trillion and $4.86 trillion, respectively. Nvidia was on top for almost a year, which was supported by demand for graphics processors used to train and operate artificial intelligence models. It became the first company to cross $5 trillion valuation in October 2025.
Nvidia’s decline on Monday came amid new scrutiny of the scale and financing of AI infrastructure projects. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company was in talks to provide about $250 billion of financial guarantees for an OpenAI data-center project in Ohio. According to the report, the proposed guarantee will help the project in getting financing. Negotiations are still ongoing, and terms may change.
Apple’s low-cost AI strategy
Apple’s return to the top has drawn attention to the differences between its capital-spending strategy and those of many other big technology companies. According to Yahoo Finance AlphaSense data, the iPhone maker’s capital expenditure has declined in the last three quarters. Apple has not spent as much on data centers, computing capacity and other AI infrastructure as Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms.
For example, Alphabet last week raised its projected 2026 capital spending to between $195 billion and $205 billion after reporting higher spending on AI infrastructure. The company also recorded negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion for the quarter. Due to Apple’s comparatively low expenses, it was earlier criticized that it was lagging behind its competitors in Artificial Intelligence.
Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, told Yahoo Finance that after once being criticized for not spending more on AI, they have managed to avoid some of those capex losses. Apple has continued to build AI products without building the same infrastructure as the largest cloud-computing providers.
At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company introduced Siri AI, a redesigned version of its voice assistant with conversational capabilities, access to personal context, and the ability to use information shown on the device’s screen. The launch comes after repeated delays with the AI features first slated for 2024.
Apple has said that its AI system processes some tasks on its devices, while more complex requests are handled through private cloud compute. The company expanded that system from its data centers in June.
focus on earnings
Apple is scheduled to report its fiscal third quarter results after US markets close on Thursday, July 30. Its investor call is scheduled for 5 pm Eastern Time. These results will be the company’s first quarterly update since introducing the redesigned Siri and the latest Apple Intelligence features in June.
Apple reported revenue of $111.2 billion for its fiscal second quarter, up 17 percent from a year earlier. Shares rose 22 percent to $2.01 on diluted earnings, while iPhone revenue hit a March-quarter record and services revenue reached an all-time high.
The company has not disclosed a separate capital-expenditure target for Apple Intelligence. Its earnings call will give management its next scheduled opportunity to talk about the rollout of its AI products, infrastructure needs and operating margins.
SpaceX continues to decline
On the other hand, there is a continuous decline in the shares of SpaceX. SpaceX shares closed 1.4 percent lower at $113.50 on Monday. The special thing is that the company’s shares have seen a decline for the 13th day in the last 16 trading sessions. The closing price was about 16 percent less than the company’s initial public offering price of $135.
The stock has fallen nearly 50 percent from its post-listing high of $225.64, shaving more than $1.2 trillion from SpaceX’s market value. SpaceX raised $75 billion in its IPO on June 12, which is the largest US public offering to date. Before the start of trading, the company’s value had increased to $ 1.77 trillion due to the sale of 555.56 million shares.
Shares initially rose above $225, then fell below their IPO price in mid-July. Short sellers had accumulated paper profits of about $15.5 billion as of July 23, according to data from Ortex Technologies cited by Reuters. At that time, about 56 percent of SpaceX’s freely traded shares were on loan.
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