Apple Shares Hit Record $336.91, Market Cap Tops Nvidia at $4.93 Trillion

Apple's stock closed at a record $336.91 on July 28, lifting its market value to approximately $4.93 trillion. On the same day, Nvidia's shares fell nearly 5%, reducing its market capitalization to $4.78 trillion. Apple thereby overtook Nvidia to reclaim the position of the world's most valuable listed company.

Apple's stock outperformed the Nasdaq 100 index by 23 percentage points in July, the largest monthly lead since 2005. The company has kept capital expenditure restrained, with spending trending downward over the past three quarters. Apple pays Google about $1 billion annually to use custom models for Siri's AI upgrade, avoiding the heavy cash outlays associated with training large models.

By contrast, Alphabet, Google's parent company, raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $195 billion to $205 billion in its earnings report, and its second-quarter free cash flow turned negative for the first time since its 2004 initial public offering. Tesla also expanded spending due to increased investment in autonomous driving and robotics research. Shares of both companies fell after their earnings releases. Apple's global smartphone market share rose to 20% from 17% a year earlier, despite pressure from rising memory chip prices.

Apple's current price-to-earnings ratio stands at about 30 times, compared with roughly 22 times for the S&P 500. The company is due to report earnings this week, alongside Meta and Amazon, with investors focused on their AI spending.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will step down on September 1 and become executive chairman, with John Ternus, a senior hardware executive, succeeding him.