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Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft will spend the next year racing to hit $4 trillion market capitalizations, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a research note Wednesday.
Since launching Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, the iPhone maker’s stock price has climbed to an all-time, post-split high of $215 per share, as investors signaled their faith in the company’s artificial intelligence strategy. The response pushed Apple’s market capitalization past Microsoft’s to regain its spot as the world’s most valuable company — a spot it held for more than a decade before it was unseated by Microsoft in January. Apple’s market cap stood at $3.3 trillion in intraday trading, while Microsoft’s was $3.26 trillion and Nvidia’s was $3.12 trillion.
But Nvidia has made major gains that could eventually drive its value past those of Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia briefly overtook Apple last week as the world’s most valuable company, and the chipmaker’s stock has been on a tear as sales of its semiconductors, also known as GPUs (graphics processing units), continue to surpass Wall Street’s expectations.
Ives, who refers to the ongoing innovation and adoption of generative AI technologies as “the 4th Industrial Revolution,” said, “Nvidia’s GPU chips are in essence the new gold or oil in the tech sector as more enterprises and consumers quickly head down this path with the 4th Industrial Revolution well underway.”
“The AI Revolution starts with Nvidia…” he added.
But Ives sees Microsoft’s and Apple’s golden days getting golder, too. The analyst has been talking about a $4 trillion Apple market cap for months.
“The delayed positive reaction from the Street on the Apple Intelligence news was investors starting to fully digest that the AI Revolution will come through the consumer with an Apple device over the coming year,” he said. However, this is a familiar pattern for Apple; its stock often drops during its events and typically regains soon after.