TradingKey - In early U.S. trading, Apple ( AAPL )'s market capitalization briefly surpassed Nvidia's ( NVDA ), becoming the world's most valuable company.
Nvidia's stock price fell as much as 3% in early trading, with its market capitalization dropping to approximately $484 million, while Apple's market capitalization hovered around $4.88 trillion. Subsequently, both companies' share prices rebounded. As of press time, Nvidia's decline narrowed to around 1.5%, with its market cap at $4.95 trillion, while Apple rose slightly by 0.08%, bringing its market cap to $4.9 trillion.
Source: TradingView
Apple has risen 23% so far this year, with a 15% gain this month alone, making it the most outstanding performer among the Mag7. It has significantly outperformed the Nasdaq 100 Index (up 13% year-to-date) and the S&P 500 Index (up 9.29% year-to-date).
The core logic behind Apple's potential return to the world's largest market capitalization is the repricing of the AI trade. Amid a broader correction in the AI sector and the continued cooling of related trading logic, Apple, with its low capital expenditure profile, massive device base, and advantages in hardware-software integration, is emerging as a rare asset in the tech sector that offers both certainty and growth potential.
Over the past year, as the core beneficiary of AI infrastructure expansion, Nvidia has driven its valuation continuously higher on the back of explosive demand for computing power. Currently, the market is divided over the scale, return, and sustainability of AI capital expenditures, significantly amplifying stock price volatility. Following the launch of new large models by Chinese AI enterprises, investors have begun to reassess the rationality of Silicon Valley's massive AI spending, exerting mutual pressure on related tech stocks.
Meanwhile, Apple's massive consumer electronics lineup is viewed by the market as the core entry point for AI deployment. As Apple Intelligence penetrates more hardware and software scenarios, its commercialization will move beyond the logic of a single blockbuster product, and is expected to build a completely new closed-loop ecosystem relying on operating systems, application services, and hardware iterations.
HSBC upgraded Apple to a 'Buy' rating today, marking the latest signal of Wall Street's shifting sentiment toward the company.
HSBC analysts believe Apple is currently at an operational turning point. The company does not need to get dragged into the industry-wide arms race of high capital expenditures, avoiding the risk of return uncertainty brought by heavy AI capex. At the same time, its global installed base of 2.5 billion devices provides a massive foundation for AI deployment. The upgraded version of Apple Intelligence and the agent Siri, set to launch later this year, are expected to fully unlock the value of existing users. This rating adjustment also raised the target price significantly from $260 to $366, representing approximately 10% upside potential.
In addition to AI feature upgrades, hardware-side innovation will also become a core growth driver. The market generally expects Apple to release a foldable iPhone in September, and shipment expectations for this year have been revised upward from 7-8 million units to 10 million units. The premium-priced foldable model, combined with AI feature upgrades, is expected to trigger a strong user upgrade cycle, while also offsetting cost pressures from rising memory chip prices.
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