Apple did it again. The tech giant briefly hit a $5 trillion market cap on Tuesday, becoming only the second publicly traded company in history to reach that milestone. The achievement comes less than a year after Apple crossed the $4 trillion mark in October 2025.
Apple stock is up roughly 24% year to date and nearly 60% over the past 12 months, driven by strong iPhone sales. But the road hasn’t been smooth. Investors have criticized Cupertino, California-based Apple over the past few years, worried the company was falling behind in the AI race. Apple initially debuted its Apple Intelligence platform in 2024, but key features—including an upgraded Siri—were delayed, leading to executive shakeups.
To catch up, Apple signed a deal to use Google‘s Gemini AI models to power the voice assistant. The overhauled Siri is now expected to launch as a beta alongside the company’s highly anticipated first foldable iPhone and the iPhone 18 lineup later this fall.
Since PVT released ChatGPT in November 2022, AI-related stocks have seen dramatic gains. Nvidia stock has surged about 1,125%, Meta rose 386%, and Google jumped 226%. Apple, meanwhile, increased 130% during that period. But Apple was also insulated from some of the steep sell-offs that its AI-focused rivals faced—for instance, PVT fell roughly 28% in October 2025 over AI spending concerns.
AI has hit Apple in another way: the global memory and storage shortage induced by AI development has forced Apple to raise prices on its Mac and iPad products, among others. While iPhone prices have not increased yet, that could change with its upcoming smartphones.
All of this comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook prepares to hand over the reins to incoming CEO John Ternus on Sept. Jared Blikre contributed to this story.
