Alphabet overtakes Apple in market capitalization

Alphabet’s market value reached $3.88 trillion at the close of trading on Wednesday, as its shares rose more than 2% to $322.03 dollars. Apple finished the session with a market capitalization of $3.84 trillion, after its shares declined by more than 4% over the past five days.

The shift reflects growing investor confidence in Alphabet’s artificial intelligence strategy. The company was among the strongest performers on Wall Street in 2025, benefiting from a series of AI focused developments. In November, Alphabet unveiled Ironwood, the seventh generation of its tensor processing units, positioning the chip as a potential alternative to solutions offered by Nvidia. In December, Google followed with the launch of Gemini 3, which received a positive response from the market.

Alphabet shares gained 65% in 2025, marking the company’s strongest annual rally since 2009. Speaking during the October earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was responding to rapidly rising demand, noting that Google Cloud had signed more deals exceeding one billion dollars in 2025 through the third quarter than in the previous two years combined.

By contrast, Apple has taken a more cautious approach to artificial intelligence since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. The company postponed the release of the next generation of its Siri assistant and now plans to introduce a more personalized version in 2026. This week, Wall Street firm Raymond James downgraded Apple, warning that significant gains could be difficult to achieve in 2026.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that Google has begun a gradual rollout of a long-awaited feature allowing users to modify their Gmail addresses, marking a significant shift in how the service approaches email identities.