Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) has officially overtaken Apple (AAPL) as the second-most-valuable company in the world.
The company closed Wednesday’s trading session with a market capitalization of $3.89 trillion, topping Apple’s $3.85 trillion. It marked the first time the Google parent company has surpassed the iPhone maker in value since 2019.
Alphabet widened its lead Thursday, as shares in the tech behemoth ticked up 1%, putting its $3.94 trillion market cap further above Apple’s $3.84 trillion at the market close.
Alphabet-owned Google has recast its image from a fading internet giant to a leading AI innovator. Although the company was initially seen as threatened by more nimble AI rivals, especially OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), Google has used its scale to reassert leadership in the AI space — across both cutting-edge software and custom hardware. Its AI chips, known as TPUs, have become one of the largest competitive threats to Nvidia (NVDA), as they attract interest from Meta (META) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT). And Google’s latest Gemini 3 AI model widely outperformed rivals on industry benchmark tests.
Alphabet was the top-performing “Magnificent Seven” Big Tech stock in 2025, notching a 65% gain, followed by Nvidia’s 39% surge. Analysts expect Alphabet to continue as a top-performing stock in 2026.
Meanwhile, Apple is contending with a number of executive departures as it prepares for life after the expected upcoming departure of CEO Tim Cook. Apple has yet to prove itself as an AI leader, and although it has made some progress rolling out the tech on its devices, investors are eagerly awaiting the debut of Apple’s crucial next-generation Siri.
Despite Alphabet’s surge ahead of Apple this week, the company’s nearly $4 trillion market cap lags AI chipmaker Nvidia’s $4.5 trillion value.
In 2026, Alphabet will have to show how it’s using its AI stack to fuel revenue growth as investors place greater scrutiny on tech giants’ return on massive investments in servers and data centers.
As Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon put it in a December report, “Gemini’s success is clearly directionally positive, although the focus is shifting from pure model performance to product adoption and monetization.”
