Apple’s stock jumped more than 7% to a record high on Tuesday, nearly taking back its crown as the world’s most valuable company from Microsoft, a day after unveiling new artificial intelligence features intended to revive demand for iPhones.
Tuesday’s rally came as Apple lags the S&P 500 in 2024 due to falling iPhone sales and concerns from Wall Street that the company is lagging other weights tech heavyweights in the race to dominate the emerging technology of artificial intelligence.
Apple shares rose 7.3% to end the day at $207.15.
With a market capitalization of $3.18 trillion, Apple is just behind Microsoft ($3.22 trillion) and just ahead of Nvidia ($2.97 trillion), the artificial intelligence chip giant.
These three companies are in a tight race to become the most valuable company in the world.
Microsoft’s market value recently surpassed Apple’s in January. Nvidia’s value briefly eclipsed Apple’s last week.
At its annual developer event, Apple on Monday unveiled an improved version of its virtual assistant Siri, capable of answering more questions and completing more complex tasks than previous versions, as well as several features of AI in its applications which will be delivered with the latest operating systems for iPhones, iPads and Mac computers.
At least 13 analysts raised their price targets for Apple shares after the developer event, with some saying the latest features could encourage a cascade of new purchases as the company prepares to announce a new lineup of ‘iPhones in the fall.
“Apple is demonstrating that it is invested in evolving its platform and devices to enable the next era of computing, interfaces and experiences,” said Tuong Nguyen, an analyst at Gartner. (Reporting by Yuvraj Malik and Shubham Batra in Bengaluru and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Writing by Shounak Dasgupta and Bill Berkrot)
