Apple surpassed Nvidia in market value on Friday, briefly becoming the world’s most valuable company. The chipmaker’s stock fell nearly five percent at one point after the new Chinese AI model Kimi K3 raised doubts about billion-dollar investments in AI data centers. By the close of trading, Nvidia had reclaimed the top spot at $4.92 trillion.
Kimi K3 triggers a stock slide at Nvidia
The turbulence was triggered by the unveiling of Kimi K3 by the Chinese company Moonshot AI. The open language model, with 2.8 trillion parameters, is said by its maker to approach the performance of top US models at significantly lower operating cost. Investors feared, according to a report by Motley Fool, that cheaper AI models could dampen big tech’s planned billion-dollar spending on new data centers and chips. Nvidia stock fell nearly five percent at the market open, before the loss narrowed to around 2.2 percent during the day. The company’s market value briefly dropped to about $4.82 trillion, figures from Forbes show. Apple was largely spared from the sell-off: the stock slipped less than 0.1 percent the same day, with its market value briefly reaching around $4.91 trillion. By the close, the picture flipped again: Nvidia finished the day at $4.92 trillion, just ahead of Apple’s $4.89 trillion, Fox Business reported. A similar stock reaction had already followed the Chinese model DeepSeek in early 2026, when doubts about the need for costly AI infrastructure also flared up.
Analysts see an edge for Apple on AI costs
Analyst Toni Meadows of Fox Business said Apple had long been seen as a laggard in the AI race because it wasn’t building its own foundation model. That perception has now shifted, according to Meadows: Apple spends far less than Nvidia, Meta, or Google on building its own AI data centers and can instead market AI features through its existing devices and services. Apple’s services business, including the App Store, iCloud, and subscriptions, also gives the company steady revenue regardless of how much it invests in AI infrastructure. That restraint has paid off on the stock market since the start of the year: Apple shares are up about 23 percent in 2026 so far, while Nvidia has gained only about 7.3 percent. Nvidia has held the title of world’s most valuable company since June 2025, while for Apple it was the first time since April 2025 — according to market data from Forbes and Fox Business. The shift at the top of the market comes as investors increasingly question whether the tech industry’s enormous AI infrastructure spending will pay off in the near term.
It remains to be seen whether the worry over slowing AI spending persists or proves as short-lived as the reaction to the DeepSeek shock earlier this year. What matters is whether Kimi K3 actually leads companies to cut planned investments in data centers and chips, or whether demand for computing power keeps rising despite cheaper models. Until then, the race for the title of world’s most valuable company between Apple and Nvidia is likely to stay close.
