ChatGPT effect: Apple displaces Microsoft as the most valuable company
Apple is back at the top. After the presentation of “Apple Intelligence” and the cooperation with OpenAI that will start in the fall, the iPhone manufacturer is once again the most valuable company in the world. This means that Apple has pushed Microsoft out of the top spot, which took this position as a major investor in OpenAI as a result of the AI hype. For about a year, Apple looked a little weak next to its arch-rival in terms of AI, but now its old strength is back.
AI feature makes Apple more valuable than ever, bigger than Nvidia
Apple has done what it often does: It doesn’t have to be the first to come out with innovations, but it always tries to perfect technology. Although no one has yet been able to test Apple Intelligence and the ChatGPT integration in the upcoming versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac, the reactions so far have been consistently good. Unlike Google, Apple also didn’t allow itself any mistakes in the – surely carefully checked – marketing materials at the presentation.
This means that the ranking of the most valuable companies in the world looks like this again:
Tough week for Microsoft
For Apple, the deal with OpenAI has paid off so far – and is expected to pay off even more from autumn onwards. According to reports, Apple is not paying the ChatGPT maker anything for the integration but is instead giving the startup massive distribution. After all, hundreds of millions of users are confronted with this every day directly on their most personal devices – and if they take out a subscription, Apple can earn money from it.
Apple also surprised everyone by being able to run its own AI models directly on end devices. Although these are weaker than the industry leaders GPT-4o from OpenAI and Gemini 1.5 Pro from Google, they can certainly keep up with other top models such as Mistral AI or open-source LLMs from Google or Microsoft. Apple can also attack where it is strong – data protection.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is having a rough week with AI products, delaying the launch of its “Recall” feature on new Copilot+ PCs because of privacy, security, and surveillance concerns over screenshots taken every five seconds that make usage history searchable.
