Behind the numbers lies a clear shift in investor appetite. Market participants have increasingly rewarded companies that can expand their artificial-intelligence capabilities without committing to the enormous capital expenditure that has defined the AI infrastructure buildout. Apple’s capital expenditure has actually declined over the past three quarters, a stark contrast to peers such as Alphabet, which recently raised its AI-related spending outlook. Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, told Yahoo Finance that Apple had “avoided some of those capex pitfalls” that now weigh on rivals.
The sell-off in Nvidia was part of a broader retreat from semiconductor stocks. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 2.23 percent on the day, with memory-chip names hit particularly hard. SK Hynix’s US-listed shares dropped below their IPO price, and SanDisk lost $170 billion in market value within a month. The pressure reflected growing unease about the financing structures behind large-scale AI data-centre projects and whether the returns can justify the spending.
Apple’s advance was also supported by its own operational momentum. The company’s most recently reported quarter posted 17 percent revenue growth and a 22 percent jump in iPhone revenue, while its Services gross margin reached 76.7 percent. In the first half of fiscal 2026, Apple spent $36 billion repurchasing 135 million shares, a buyback programme that added roughly 2.5 percentage points to quarterly earnings-per-share growth by reducing the share count.