**What happened: **Apple (AAPL) reclaimed the title of the world's most valuable public company from Nvidia (NVDA) as the iPhone maker's stock headed toward a record-high close on Monday.
Shares rose over 1%, giving Apple a market capitalization of roughly $4.94 trillion, per Yahoo Finance data. Nvidia's market cap stood at $4.83 trillion.
**What's behind the move: **Apple shares have climbed more than 22% year to date, outperforming the "Magnificent Seven" group, as investors increasingly view the company's restrained AI spending as a strength rather than a weakness.
"Once criticized for not spending more on AI, they have been able to avoid some of those capex pitfalls," said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets.
Apple has taken a notably measured approach to capital expenditures. Yahoo Finance's AlphaSpace data shows the company's capex has declined over the past three quarters rather than increased.
That stands in contrast to Alphabet** (GOOG, GOOGL), **which last week raised its capital spending outlook to support its AI infrastructure build-out, and EV maker Tesla (TSLA), which increased spending to fund its robotaxi and robotics ambitions.
Shares of both companies fell following their earnings reports. Alphabet stock is up about 3% year to date, while Tesla stock has tumbled roughly 30% over the same period.
Investors are now awaiting earnings this week from Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META), all of which are expected to announce further increases in AI-related spending.
**What else you need to know: **Apple will report earnings on Thursday after the closing bell. Investors will keep an eye on the company's AI developments, looking for signs that it can scale its "Apple Intelligence" features on its devices without a bump in capital expenditures or an impact on operating margins.
Thursday will mark the final earnings call for Tim Cook as CEO before he steps down on Sept. 1 to become executive chairman, officially passing the reins to John Ternus, a hardware engineering veteran at Apple.
Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.
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