--- title: Apple hits $5tn by sitting out the AI spending race description: Apple briefly touched a $5 trillion market cap, becoming only the second company in history to do so after Nvidia. The milestone came not from AI leadership... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/apple-hits-5tn-by-sitting-out-the-ai-spending-race-xgacfshzk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Apple hits $5tn by sitting out the AI spending race | daily.dev og:description: Apple briefly touched a $5 trillion market cap, becoming only the second company in history to do so after Nvidia. The milestone came not from AI leadership... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/apple-hits-5tn-by-sitting-out-the-ai-spending-race-xgacfshzk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/xgACFShzk.png og:image:alt: Apple hits $5tn by sitting out the AI spending race og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Apple hits $5tn by sitting out the AI spending race **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Apple briefly touched a $5 trillion market cap, becoming only the second company in history to do so after Nvidia. The milestone came not from AI leadership but from restraint — Apple spends roughly $11bn on AI annually while rivals like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon each pour $100bn+ into data centers. Investor rotation out of AI-heavy stocks, triggered by Google reporting negative free cash flow and raising capex guidance to $205bn, sent money flowing into Apple as a safer consumer name. The irony is that Apple's AI strategy remains weak — Siri's redesign is still in beta, its OpenAI partnership has collapsed into a lawsuit, and it relies on Google's AI technology. Tim Cook's final earnings call as CEO is imminent, with John Ternus set to take over in September. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How much is Apple spending on AI compared to other big tech companies like Google and Microsoft? Apple is expected to spend about $11bn on AI this year, far below the $100bn-plus each major hyperscaler like Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft is laying out on AI infrastructure and data centers. Apple relies on Google's technology to power its own AI features rather than building extensive in-house compute infrastructure. _Developers weighing build-versus-rent AI infrastructure decisions can follow this cost gap on daily.dev._ ### Why did Apple's stock hit a $5 trillion market cap while other big tech AI stocks fell? Apple briefly touched a $5.04tn market value as investors rotated out of AI-heavy stocks and into Apple, which has largely sat out heavy AI capital spending. The move followed a tech selloff after Alphabet raised its capex guidance to $205bn and reported its first-ever negative free cash flow, burning $5.9bn in a quarter, fueling worries about circular AI financing among hyperscalers. _Anyone tracking how AI spending decisions ripple through the tech sector can follow this story on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Apple’s Slow AI Pace Becomes a Strength as Market Grows Weary of Spending](https://daily.dev/posts/apple-s-slow-ai-pace-becomes-a-strength-as-market-grows-weary-of-spending-ytodvuwgy) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Amazon and Google are winning the AI capex race — but what’s the prize?](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-and-google-are-winning-the-ai-capex-race-but-what-s-the-prize--czuzcgbqg) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Apple races past $4-trillion in market value](https://daily.dev/posts/apple-races-past-4-trillion-in-market-value-fxezrjbzt) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#apple](https://daily.dev/tags/apple), [#big-tech](https://daily.dev/tags/big-tech) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/apple-hits-5tn-by-sitting-out-the-ai-spending-race-xgacfshzk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Apple hits $5tn by sitting out the AI spending race","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/apple-hits-5tn-by-sitting-out-the-ai-spending-race-xgacfshzk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/apple-hits-5tn-by-sitting-out-the-ai-spending-race-xgacfshzk"},"datePublished":"2026-07-29T17:02:30.342Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:41:44.162Z","description":"Apple briefly touched a $5 trillion market cap, becoming only the second company in history to do so after Nvidia. 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