Home
News
You are here

For the first time in years, this major rival is more valuable than Apple

With Wall Street no longer focusing so much on smartphones, an Apple rival is now worth more than Apple.

1comment

By Alan Friedman

Published: Jan 08, 2026, 1:06 AM

Apple Google

Apple iPhones sit in a row on a table at an Apple Store.

The tech world is much different than it was back in August 2018 when Apple became the first U.S. publicly traded company to be valued at $1 trillion. On that date, Google parent Alphabet closed with a a market capitalization (share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding) of $854 billion. On January 29, 2019, Alphabet topped Apple by the end of that day with a valuation of $744.4 billion compared to Apple's $692 billion.

Nvidia's shares have risen tremendously since ChatGPT made generative AI accessible to the public

Over the years, Apple rebounded and became the first to reach a $2 trillion market cap on August 19, 2020. It became the first to hit $3 trillion on January 3, 2022. Later that year, one event changed the tech world, and it had a major effect on the financial markets. OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT made AI more accessible to the public and Wall Street ate it up.

Chart comparing market cap of Alphabet and Apple.

Chart compares the market cap of Apple and Alphabet over the last year. | Image credit-Gemini

Nvidia, the company that designs GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) became a Wall Street darling. GPUs, the chips used to create graphics on video games, computers, smartphones, and tablets, are perfect for AI. That is because they use parallel processing that allows them to handle thousands of small tasks at the same time. This makes GPUs perfect for Matrix Multiplication, which is used by AI and is a type of math where you multiply thousands of numbers at once. Thanks to parallel processing, a GPU can perform these calculations in a single "heartbeat." A CPU (Central Processing Unit) processes tasks sequentially or one by one, which takes much longer.

Thanks to AI, Nvidia became the hottest stock in the hottest sector

GPUs cut the number of days it takes to train an AI model and are also responsible for the ridiculously fast time it takes to receive an answer to your query. And if you feel that getting answers from AI in milliseconds is too slow for you, Nvidia claims that its 2026 Vera Rubin platform is faster than current GPUs designed by the company. The platform is also expected to lower operational costs.

As AI became the big buzz word in the market, Nvidia's valuation soared, first surpassing Apple's market capitalization in June 2024. The day that Apple became the first stock to hit a value of $3 trillion in January 2022, Nvidia was valued at $750 billion. By July 2025, Nvidia became the first publicly traded U.S. firm to reach a valuation of $4 trillion and it is currently the most valuable public U.S. company. Adjusted for splits, Nvidia was trading at $30.07 on January 3, 2022, compared to today's close at $189.11.

Alphabet rides the AI train to become more valuable than Apple

Thanks to AI, Google parent Alphabet has also become a must-own stock in the tech sector. Today, for the first time since it briefly topped Apple's valuation in 2019, Alphabet is more valuable than Apple. With that in mind, you probably could say that Google is valued higher on Wall Street than Apple and not have to worry about being corrected.

Which company will be more valuable in five years?

As of the market close on Wednesday, January 7th, 2026, Apple has a market cap of $3.84 trillion after the shares declined more than 4% over the last five days. Alphabet's stock rose over 2% on Wednesday, closing at $322.03 for a market cap of $3.88 trillion.

Agentic AI is poised to be huge

Alphabet had a great 2025 with the stock rising 65%. This trend higher might continue as AI grows from being a content creator to a technology that takes action. Agentic AI refers to "agents" that can reason, plan, and execute multi-step tasks by itself with minimal human intervention. For example, agentic AI would take a task to plan a trip to Salem, Mass. for $500 or less and research flights, hotels, and activities, and book them while printing an itinerary.

Google is considered to have an advantage over other tech firms when it comes to agentic AI. That's because Google has agents built into its interfaces. It converted Chrome into an agentic browser and can now book restaurant reservations or shop on your behalf by interacting with a grocery store's website. Chrome's address bar (aka the Omnibox) can handle queries such as "Compare all the flight options in my open tabs and put them in a Google Sheet," and this will be done autonomously.

Unless Apple develops AR glasses that become a huge hit, don't expect the company's shares to dominate the tech sector like they used to a few years ago. AI is the new Sheriff in town and right now that is a technology that Google does much better than Apple. Apple's AI initiative, Apple Intelligence, was overhyped by Apple and the latter failed to deliver. Many believe that Apple's AI hopes depend on whether it can pull off the AI-powered Siri that could offer some agentic features. Already delayed, we could see the new Siri released as soon as this spring in iOS 26.4.

View Full Bio

Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.

Read the latest from Alan Friedman