Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the company's annual developers conference event at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California on June 10, 2024.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Apple, which unveiled its artificial intelligence efforts during a keynote address at its developers conference on Monday, briefly surpassed Microsoft as the world's most valuable company on Wednesday.
As of around 10:45 a.m. ET, Apple's market cap was $3.3 trillion, surpassing Microsoft's $3.2 trillion, but this figure did not hold through the close of trading, with Microsoft taking the lead at the close.
Shares surged more than 7% to a record high on Tuesday as investors digested Apple's plans to build artificial intelligence into a range of its devices. The frenzy continued into Wednesday trading, with shares up another 2.8%.
Apple has announced that it will be incorporating generative AI technology into its native apps and latest devices, with a range of features from assistive writing technology to AI-generated emojis.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley, Evercore and Bank of America wrote in an investor note this week that Apple's new AI feature, “Apple Intelligence,” will encourage users to buy new iPhones. “Limiting Apple Intelligence to iPhones sold within the past year strengthens our confidence that AI will help launch an iPhone supercycle,” the Evercore analysts wrote.
The battle for the top spot is on: Microsoft surpassed Apple's market capitalization earlier this year, and Nvidia surpassed Apple earlier this month, briefly becoming the second-largest publicly traded U.S. company by market capitalization.
Microsoft is also likely to benefit from Apple's AI ambitions: The iPhone maker said it will include OpenAI's large-scale language models as a feature it offers to its users, with other models to be added in the future. Microsoft is one of OpenAI's largest investors, and its Azure cloud service has seen growth recently from widespread adoption of OpenAI models.
