Apple retakes crown as world’s most valuable company

The iPhone maker’s market capitalization has surpassed $3.5 trillion for the first time in history
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The tech titan’s stock has soared since it unveiled artificial intelligence features for its devices last month

US consumer electronics giant Apple on Wednesday retained the position as the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of over $3.5 trillion, according to Nasdaq data.

As of 18:30 GMT, the iPhone maker’s stock was trading up 1.4% at nearly $232 per share, bringing its market cap to $3.543 trillion, the highest any publicly traded company has ever achieved. The previous record belonged to rival tech giant Microsoft, whose highest closing market cap was $3.475 trillion on July 5.

This is not the first record-breaking valuation for Apple. In August 2018, it became the first company to reach a market cap of $1 trillion; two years later, it was the first to reach $2 trillion and then last June it hit $3 trillion.

READ MORE: Apple no longer world's most valuable company

Apple stock had a rough start to this year amid concerns over weakness in iPhone sales and competition from other tech majors, which triggered a number of analyst downgrades. The company lost its position as the world’s most valuable company to Microsoft in January, following the latter’s aggressive rollout of a number of AI features over the previous year. The two have been neck and neck in terms of market cap over the last month, with Apple briefly catching up in early June, before again falling behind Microsoft.

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However, Apple shares started rapidly gaining after the company unveiled ‘Apple Intelligence,’ its batch of new AI features, on June 10. The features include a partnership with OpenAI, and will be added to a new version of Apple’s iOS 18 operating system and the highly anticipated iPhone 16.

Commenting on Apple’s performance, Wedbush Securities senior analyst Dan Ives told CNBC that the company’s introduction of AI features could take its valuation to $4 trillion next year.

“I think the stocks are telling you what you already know. For Apple right now, they’re at the top of the mountain… With Apple Intelligence, they have the keys to the castle. This is the start of a Renaissance of growth… a year from now I think we can look forward to a $4 trillion market cap,” Ives predicted, noting, however, that Apple will likely spend it racing to hit this mark with Nvidia and Microsoft.

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