Apple Closes In on Nvidia for Largest U.S. Company Crown
Nvidia's valuation has cratered to 2013 levels as Apple surges, threatening to reclaim the top spot among U.S. companies.
The throne is up for grabs. Apple is breathing down Nvidia's neck in the race to be America's most valuable company, and the momentum has clearly shifted. Nvidia, once the undisputed king of the AI trade, has watched its valuation compress to levels not seen since 2013. That's not a typo — over a decade of multiple expansion, nearly erased.
Apple, meanwhile, keeps grinding higher. The iPhone maker never really owned the AI hype cycle the way Nvidia did, but that's looking like a feature, not a bug. When the AI euphoria cools and valuations get stress-tested, steady cash-flow machines like Apple tend to outperform the momentum darlings. Right now, that playbook is printing.
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For traders, this is more than a fun scoreboard battle. The largest company in the U.S. index carries serious weight in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. If Apple retakes the top slot, passive fund flows, ETF rebalancing, and sentiment could all provide a secondary tailwind — meaning this isn't just a narrative trade, there's a mechanical angle here too.
Nvidia's slide from AI poster child to a stock with 2013-era valuation multiples is a cautionary tale about buying into a theme at peak saturation. The chip giant isn't broken, but the market is clearly repricing what those AI revenues are actually worth long-term. Apple's relative strength in this environment says investors want durability over dazzle right now.
Watch this spread closely. The gap is closing fast, and whichever name sits at number one when the dust settles will tell you a lot about where big money thinks the next cycle is headed. Continue reading at MarketWatch.com.
