The title of “World’s Most Valuable Company” belongs to Apple once again.
As of mid-afternoon Wednesday (June 12), the iPhone maker’s market capitalization stood at $3.38 trillion, putting it ahead of Microsoft — $3.29 market cap — for the first time in months.
The company’s stock had begun to climb after Apple began the week with its annual developers conference, at which the tech giant rolled out a series of artificial intelligence (AI) features for its devices.
“All those questions about Apple lagging from an AI technology standpoint were answered at the Worldwide Developers Conference,” Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, told Reuters.
“Some of the specifics about AI capabilities that are going to be integrated into the upcoming iPhones made it very apparent that there will clearly be demand for a significant upgrade cycle.”
Microsoft surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company earlier this year, thanks to its own investments in AI. It marked a reversal of fortune for the two longtime rivals, as Apple had been the first company to be worth more than $1 trillion, and then $2 trillion.
And last week, chipmaker Nvidia pushed Apple into third place and broke past the $3 trillion market cap mark as it also benefited from the AI boom.
But Apple’s position in the U.S. phone market gives it a major advantage in introducing AI functionality, experts told PYMNTS earlier this week.
“Apple’s dominant position, with a 60% market share in the U.S. phone market, gives it a massive advantage in rolling out AI functionality that seamlessly improves the core product and user experience,” said Sunil Rao, CEO and co-founder of Tribble. “This integration will significantly influence consumer behavior and market competition.”
As AI integrates into Apple’s operating system, consumers may prefer this approach rather than using specific AI apps.
“This sets strong competition for some specific apps but still provides the possibility to handle complex tasks with Siri through third-party apps,” Bohdan Khomych, head of R&D commercialization at software development firm SoftServe, told PYMNTS.
“From the perspective of the foundation model, only GPT integration was announced, but there is hope to see Gemini this year,” Khomych added, referring to Google’s AI model.
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