Apple became the world’s largest company on Friday, briefly reclaiming the spot from Nvidia following a slide in shares for the AI bellwether and as the iPhone maker accelerates its plans for the growing technology.
The iPhone maker is once again the world’s largest company by market value.
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Key Facts
- Shares of Nvidia dropped by 3.9% shortly after trading opened Friday, lowering the company’s market valuation to about $4.82 trillion, before paring back losses to about 2.2% to $4.91 trillion.
- That pushed Apple, whose shares decreased by less than one-tenth of a percentage point, ahead of Nvidia as the world’s largest firm by market capitalization at $4.88 trillion before falling behind later in the morning.
- The stocks have had different trajectories so far this year: Apple has jumped nearly 23%, far outpacing the tech-heavy Nasdaq, while Nvidia has trailed with just 7.3% growth.
Surprising Fact
Apple was the first company to reach the $1 trillion, $2 trillion and $3 trillion market capitalization milestones, while Nvidia was the first to cross the $4 trillion threshold in July 2025, extending a nearly 35,000% surge for the stock over the prior decade. At their market valuations as of Friday morning, both companies are valued more than the gross domestic product—a broad measure of the size of a country’s economy—of Japan ($4.3 trillion), the United Kingdom ($4.2 trillion) and India ($4.1 trillion), and would rank the fourth- and fifth-largest economies in the world behind the U.S. ($32 trillion), China ($20.8 trillion) and Germany ($5.4 trillion)
Key Background
Nvidia has held the title of world’s most valuable company since June 2025, when the AI giant surpassed Microsoft. It became the first firm to hit a $5 trillion market cap in October, and its growth has since slowed amid swings in AI-related investor sentiment. Apple held the top spot for market capitalization for much of the previous decade, surpassing Exxon in 2011, before swapping ranks periodically with Microsoft. Nvdia overtook Apple to become the second-largest company by market value in June 2024, behind Microsoft, before surpassing both companies two weeks later to become the world’s largest company forthe first time.
This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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