Apple briefly tops $5 trillion market cap on July 28

Apple Inc. briefly surpassed a $5 trillion market valuation on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, becoming only the second publicly traded company in history to reach that milestone. The achievement came just one day after the iPhone maker reclaimed its position as the world's most valuable publicly traded company, overtaking chipmaker Nvidia.

Apple's shares hit a session high of $342.89, pushing its market capitalization to approximately $5.036 trillion before retreating slightly. The company's stock has climbed roughly 25% since the start of the year, significantly outperforming other major technology stocks. Nvidia, which was the first company to breach the $5 trillion threshold in October 2025, has seen its shares gain about 6% in 2026.

The shift at the top of the market valuation rankings reflects a notable change in investor sentiment. While many technology giants have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to building artificial intelligence infrastructure, Apple has pursued a more restrained capital expenditure strategy. Instead of constructing massive proprietary data centers, Apple has relied on partnerships, rented cloud computing capacity, and licensed AI technology from...