Apple overtook Nvidia this morning to become the largest publicly traded company.

Apple hit an all-time high of $334.95 per share just 10 minutes into trading on Friday, overtaking Nvidia to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.

This valuation makes the company worth more than $4.92 trillion.

At the same time, Nvidia was trading at $199.38, down 4% from Thursday’s closing price. This puts the company’s value at $4.83 trillion, more than $100 billion behind Apple.

While this was an all-time high for Apple, it wasn’t the first time it had topped a global leaderboard. It also became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in April 2025.

Nvidia has been wearing that crown for much of the past year, including the 12 months starting in June 2025.

This switch had more to do with Nvidia’s decline than Apple’s rise. Apple shares were little changed in morning trading, but Nvidia shares fell more than 3%.

Apple rewards conservative AI spending

Wall Street spent July pulling away from the biggest spenders on AI and reallocating it to the powerful. Apple entered Friday up 22% this year, far ahead of Nvidia’s more modest 7% after Nvidia’s outperformance in 2025.

Investments have gradually shifted from pure AI names to memory component manufacturers like Micron and Sandisk.

Some discretion over AI spending has been a benefit for Apple.

HSBC upgraded its acquisition target for Apple to $366 on Friday, citing modest capital expenditures at 2.5% of sales versus the hyperscaler’s much more aggressive 39%.

Meanwhile, Apple’s AI suite cleared a registration hurdle with Beijing’s internet regulator this week, opening up a major market.

Nvidia’s slide was created two months ago. Stock prices peaked in mid-May; More than $800 billion was leaked Since then. By contrast, Apple has added that much to its market cap since last month.

After this morning’s plunge, Nvidia’s forward P/E ratio at one point was nearly 20 times, the lowest in nearly seven years, and behind chocolate maker Hershey’s, which is 21 times.

Apple, once again crowned for avoiding the biggest expense in the AI ​​arms race, will cost about 34 times more than its future profits.

Nvidia and Apple remain in a close race

Nvidia’s business clearly isn’t broken.

On Thursday, the company announced 27,500 Rubin GPUs for Japan, billed as “the world’s first national AI infrastructure for physical AI.” The project is funded by the Ministry of Sovereignty in Tokyo.

The company became a company worth $4 trillion for the first time last July, and surpassed $5 trillion for the first time in October.

Commenting on Apple’s overtaking of Nvidia today, Benjamin Hall of Segal Marco Advisors told Reuters: “I don’t see any meaningful distinction. Nvidia is likely to be a significant participant no matter what happens.”

The market quickly agreed. By 10:30 a.m. in New York, Nvidia had regained the top spot with about $4.94 trillion. Apple’s appearance this morning lasted about 50 minutes in total.

Due to continued intraday price fluctuations, Apple could regain the top spot by the end of trading.