Apple Briefly Regains Title as World’s Most Valuable Company

Apple briefly reclaimed the position of the world’s most valuable publicly traded company on Friday after a decline in Nvidia’s share price temporarily reduced the AI chipmaker’s market capitalization. The shift came as Apple continues expanding its efforts in artificial intelligence while Nvidia experienced a pullback in early trading.

Nvidia shares fell 3.9% shortly after markets opened, reducing the company’s market value to roughly $4.82 trillion. The stock later recovered part of those losses, trimming the decline to about 2.2% and lifting its valuation to approximately $4.91 trillion.

During that period, Apple’s shares slipped by less than 0.1%, allowing its market capitalization to reach about $4.88 trillion and briefly surpass Nvidia. However, Nvidia later regained the lead as trading continued.

The two technology giants have delivered different stock performances this year. Apple shares have climbed nearly 23%, significantly outperforming the Nasdaq, while Nvidia has posted a more modest gain of 7.3%.

Apple has previously led several major market capitalization milestones, becoming the first company to reach valuations of $1 trillion, $2 trillion and $3 trillion. Nvidia, meanwhile, became the first company to exceed a $4 trillion market capitalization in July 2025, capping a stock rally of nearly 35,000% over the previous decade.

At Friday morning’s valuations, both Apple and Nvidia were worth more than the gross domestic products of Japan, estimated at $4.3 trillion, the United Kingdom at $4.2 trillion and India at $4.1 trillion. Based on those figures, the two companies would rank as the world’s fourth- and fifth-largest economies, behind only the United States at $32 trillion, China at $20.8 trillion and Germany at $5.4 trillion.

Nvidia has held the title of the world’s most valuable company since June 2025, when it overtook Microsoft amid the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. The company later became the first business to achieve a $5 trillion market capitalization in October, although its growth has since moderated as investor sentiment toward AI has fluctuated.

Apple dominated global market capitalization rankings for much of the past decade after surpassing Exxon in 2011, while regularly exchanging the top position with Microsoft. Nvidia first moved ahead of Apple in June 2024 to become the second-largest company behind Microsoft, before surpassing both firms two weeks later to claim the top spot for the first time.