Apple is (again) the most valuable company in the world

Apple's announcement at WWDC of new AI-powered features, known as Apple Intelligence, led to a jump in stock price, surpassing Microsoft as the world's most valuable corporation.

Microsoft surpassed Apple in January 2024, reaching a $3 trillion market cap. The two companies have switched places in recent years due to important product launches and financial reports, which led to significant stock price increases.

Apple's stock price over the last five days tells the complete tale, with a cumulative rise of 11.26% at the time of writing and crossing the $200 barrier on Tuesday, hitting an all-time high. Apple now has a market capitalization of $3.34 trillion, whereas Microsoft's is $3.25 trillion.

Apple Intelligence was the highlight of WWDC, despite other announcements including iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, Sequoia, and more. Investors have shown interest in generative AI features, so it's not surprising that this was the case.

The main aspects of Apple Intelligence include the improvements it will make to Siri, such as summarizing messages, creating or rewriting emails, and proofreading texts, as well as the inclusion of two headliner features, Image Playground and Genmoji. Both of these entail employing AI to generate graphics, either as a full image with prompts or as a custom emoji with only prompts.

These new features will only be available on iPads and Macs with M-series processors, as well as the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, which use the A17 Pro processor. The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are likely to offer these capabilities as well, however it is unclear whether the standard iPhone 16 will.