Apple briefly became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization on Tuesday, July 28, touching a share price of $342.89 before pulling back slightly. The milestone comes just one day after Apple reclaimed the title of most valuable publicly traded company in the world, surpassing Nvidia. Shares of AAPL are up 25% in 2026, outperforming every other megacap tech stock — and the timing couldn’t be more significant, with quarterly earnings arriving Thursday in what will be CEO Tim Cook’s final earnings call before John Ternus takes over on September 1.
The rally is partly a story of contrarian vindication. For much of 2025, Wall Street penalized Apple for not aggressively investing in AI infrastructure the way Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon were. Concerns about a slow Siri upgrade and limited AI capital expenditure weighed on the stock. But the narrative has flipped in 2026. As hyperscalers have taken on hundreds of billions in new debt to fund data center buildouts — with return timelines growing murkier — Apple’s lean capital model looks like a strategic advantage. The company relies on Google’s cloud and AI infrastructure rather than building its own, keeping cash flows strong and debt minimal. Nvidia, whose GPUs power most large AI models, was the first company to hit $5 trillion in October 2025, but is up only 6% in 2026, compared to Apple’s 25% gain.
For investors, Thursday’s earnings call carries extra weight beyond the usual numbers. On Tuesday, Apple also announced Upgrade, a new leasing program that lets U.S. customers pay $17.99 per month for an iPhone rather than buying outright — a model borrowed from telecom that could smooth upgrade cycles and lock in recurring subscription-style revenue. Apple has also recently raised prices on MacBooks and iPads to pass higher global memory costs on to consumers, after CEO Tim Cook said increases had become unavoidable. The key questions for earnings: Will higher device prices dampen demand? And does new CEO Ternus have a clear AI-era product roadmap that can justify a $5 trillion valuation? The stock is priced for perfection — which makes Thursday’s call the most consequential Apple event in years.
