Apple Briefly Reclaims Title of World’s Most Valuable Company, Surpassing Microsoft Amid AI Enthusiasm

Apple on Wednesday briefly overtook Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company, hitting a $3.3 trillion market capitalization after announcing new artificial intelligence (AI) features at its developers’ conference. By the close of trading, however, it was neck and neck with Microsoft, whose market cap of $3.2 trillion regained top billing. Apple Inc. shares rose over 7% to a record high on Tuesday, tacking on 2.8% more to their price the next day as investors reacted to Apple’s AI announcement about efforts that would have it apply generative AI across its applications and equipment features — among these being its writing technology and its AI-generated emojis.

Analysts from Morgan Stanley, Evercore, and Bank of America believe these new AI features, branded as Apple Intelligence, will boost iPhone sales, particularly for models released in the last year. Evercore noted that this could initiate an iPhone “super cycle.”

While Apple and Microsoft vie for the top spot, other companies are also in the mix. Nvidia recently surpassed Apple to become the second-most valuable public U.S. company for a brief period.

Microsoft stands to benefit from Apple’s AI ambitions as well. Apple’s integration of OpenAI’s large-language models, with more models to be added later, could boost Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, driven by the growing adoption of OpenAI’s technology.