Apple reclaimed the title of the world's most valuable company on Friday, taking the position back from Nvidia as investors sought the relative safety offered by the iPhone maker amid concerns over artificial intelligence spending.
Shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) fell 1.2% on Friday, bringing its market capitalization to $5.03 trillion, while NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) dropped 4.2%, closing with a market value of $4.93 trillion. This marks the first time Apple has overtaken Nvidia again since briefly surpassing it in late July.
Friday's market selloff was largely driven by disappointing results from several major technology companies, including Intel and Amazon. Earlier, earnings from companies such as Alphabet and Meta Platforms Inc. had also fallen short of expectations. These results reignited market concerns about the outlook for AI spending, an area where Apple has largely refrained from making such large-scale investments.
Fears that the massive expenditure on AI computing infrastructure may not generate commensurate returns have made Apple, which has kept its capital spending in check, the standout performer among the Magnificent Seven technology giants this year. Apple's stock has risen 27% in 2026, more than double the gain of second-place Nvidia, which is one of the primary beneficiaries of AI spending.
The scale of this spending has become so enormous that free cash flow at companies like Alphabet and Amazon has turned negative, forcing them to increasingly turn to bond markets for financing. At the same time, rising interest rates are pushing up borrowing costs. In contrast, Apple is expected to grow its free cash flow by 38% to $142 billion in fiscal 2026, a year that ended on September 30.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 index fell 6.7% in October, its worst monthly performance since March 2025. Data center operators CoreWeave and Nebius Group, which provide AI computing services, both dropped more than 30% in October. With Friday's sharp decline, Intel's cumulative loss for October exceeded 45%, marking its largest monthly drop in Bloomberg data going back more than 40 years.
Comments