Apple is taking Wall Street's top spot back from Nvidia — for the fifth time

Apple ( AAPL ) is taking Wall Street's crown back from Nvidia — for the fifth time.

Apple briefly topped Nvidia in market value on Friday. It's a move Apple has made before, and it has rarely stuck.

Apple and Nvidia ( NVDA ) are each worth about $5.1 trillion, and the gap between them was less than 1% at Thursday's close. The flip came alongside a record run for Apple's stock and the day the tech giant's $1,999 iPhone Duo hit stores , capping a battle investors had been watching all morning. Nvidia has since moved back into the lead.

For most of the past decade, this wasn't much of a contest. Apple closed as the most valuable US-listed company in about 7 of every 10 sessions since October 2015. Microsoft ( MSFT ) took the top spot in stretches, Amazon ( AMZN ) held it for 12 sessions in early 2019, and Alphabet ( GOOG , GOOGL ) got exactly one day in 2016.

Then the AI boom rewrote the leaderboard.

Nvidia first closed at No. 1 on June 18, 2024. It has held the spot almost without a break since June 2025, interrupted only by a four-session Apple run in late July.

Apple has reclaimed the crown from Nvidia four times before today. Only once did it last, when the DeepSeek scare sank chip stocks in January 2025 and Apple held on into the spring.

Since the start of 2024, the No. 1 spot has changed hands two dozen times, according to Yahoo Finance calculations.

This time, the two stocks are heading in opposite directions. Apple closed Thursday at a record. Nvidia sits about 11% below its Oct. 6 record close after this month's chip rout .

Since that Oct. 6 close, which was also the S&P 500's ( ^IXIC ) record, Apple is the only megacap stock in the green. It's up 4%.

Watch whether Apple can finish the day on top. It hasn't since July 30.

The next big test comes on Wednesday, when Microsoft and Alphabet report earnings. They rank third and fourth, each worth about $3.9 trillion.

Internal AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts, research, and draft this post. Humans reviewed, edited, and fact-checked this post before publication.

Follow Jared Blikre on X @SPYJared or email him at jaredblikre@yahooinc.com.