Apple has reclaimed the number one spot in the ranking of the world’s most valuable companies, knocking Nvidia off the throne for the first time since April 2025.

The changing of the guard came yesterday, Monday, July 27, 2026, when Apple (AAPL) shares closed the session up 1.17% at $336.91, ahead of the company’s earnings report scheduled for this Thursday, July 30. The gain lifted the iPhone maker to a market capitalization of $4.95 trillion.

Nvidia shares, by contrast, were hit yesterday by the sell-off that once again swept AI chipmakers, falling 4.99%, or $10.33, to $196.51. The drop pushed the market value of the chip giant — a member, like Apple, of the “Magnificent Seven” — down to $4.77 trillion. Apple has thus retaken the throne, but less than 24 hours later one question is already hammering investors: will the lead prove sustainable?

A hard blow for Nvidia, dethroned by Apple as the world’s most valuable company

Nvidia has clearly taken a hard blow, considering that the AI chip giant had held the top spot in the ranking of the world’s most valuable companies for several months — since June 2025, when it overtook Microsoft.

In October, Nvidia also became the first company ever to reach a market value of $5 trillion.

Things have changed this year, with the fever for NVDA shares gradually cooling while Apple has outperformed.

Why Apple shares are beating Nvidia

Since the start of 2026, Nvidia shares have risen just 4%, while AAPL is up 24%.

Apple has benefited in particular from management’s reluctance to commit to overly high capital expenditure in pursuit of AI (artificial intelligence) — something several Big Tech peers have done instead. Its executives have preferred to buy computing capacity from outside providers rather than build their own infrastructure.

This more cautious stance relative to other U.S. Big Tech has rewarded the company at a time when investors are still asking whether the Magnificent Seven are spending too much without yet seeing a return proportionate to the scale of their investments.

Will Apple’s move past Nvidia prove sustainable? Watch the risk for the iPhone giant

There are, however, several question marks over the sustainability of Apple’s leapfrogging of Nvidia, as summed up by the Barron’s article “Apple Snatches Back the Title of World’s Most Valuable Company. Why It Won’t Last.”

The skepticism about Big Tech’s ability to hold onto the title of world’s most valuable company is clear.

The reason? The Barron’s piece points to Apple’s recent decision to raise prices on some of its products.

The announcement came in June, when the iPhone maker said it had raised the prices of Macs and iPads sold worldwide, citing the growing scarcity of the chips needed to assemble its products. In some cases, prices of its laptops and tablets jumped by nearly 20%, in the wake of what the company described as an “unprecedented challenge” caused by the “extraordinary surge” in demand for the chips needed to build AI data centers.

In justifying the increase, Apple admitted it had never seen “an increase in component costs of this magnitude, and so quickly,” adding that it was working to address the problem.

The reassuring news is that, for now, iPhones have been temporarily spared from the wave of price hikes.

But the market is anxiously awaiting Thursday’s quarterly report to understand how Apple’s margins have been dented by the higher costs. The company will disclose for the first time the impact on its books of the shortage of memory chips.

Ahead of the earnings date, it is worth noting that the average 12-month target price for Apple shares ranges between $320.61 and $325.41. The most bullish scenario points to AAPL climbing as high as $400, while the most bearish foresees a decline to $235.

Editor’s note

This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Laura Naka Antonelli on July 28, 2026 as «Apple supera Nvidia e torna la società più capitalizzata al mondo. Perché potrebbe non durare». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.