Apple Stock Closes at Record $336.91, Reclaims Top Market Cap from Nvidia

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

According to Dow Jones Market Data, Apple outperformed the Nasdaq 100 by 23 percentage points in July, the largest monthly lead since 2005. Apple has kept capital expenditure restrained, with capex declining over the past three quarters. The company pays Google about $1 billion annually for a custom model used in Siri's AI upgrade, avoiding the massive cash consumption of training large models.

By contrast, Alphabet, Google's parent company, raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $195 billion and $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 increased spending on autonomous driving and robotics development. Both companies' shares fell after their earnings releases. Apple's global smartphone market share rose from 17% a year ago to 20%, even as it faced pressure from rising memory chip prices.

Apple's current price-to-earnings ratio is about 30 times, above the S&P 500's approximately 22 times. The company is due to report earnings this week, alongside Meta and Amazon, with the market closely watching their AI-related spending.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will step down as chief executive on September 1 and become executive chairman, with hardware engineering senior executive John Ternus taking over as CEO.