Apple Nvidia market cap race swings toward Apple before July deadline
Polymarket traders now favor Apple to finish July as the world’s largest company, with earnings still ahead and Nvidia under AI capex pressure.
By Sofia Marchetti · Columnist
· 3 min read
The Apple Nvidia market cap race has tilted back toward Apple, putting the iPhone maker in position to end July as the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. For everyday investors, the contest is a clean read on two very different AI trades: Apple’s lower-spending approach versus Nvidia’s role as the chip supplier behind the data-center boom.
On Polymarket, Apple recently traded at about 79% to finish July in first place, after its odds rose by more than 50% in about a day. Nvidia, now in second place by market value, was near 22%. The market has drawn about $4.7 million in trading volume, according to Polymarket.
A prediction market lets users buy and sell contracts tied to a future event. Prices are often read as crowd-implied probabilities, though they reflect trader positioning rather than a guaranteed outcome.
Will Apple or Nvidia have the larger market cap at the end of July?
At Tuesday’s close, Apple was valued at about $4.995 trillion, while Nvidia stood at about $4.768 trillion. That put Apple ahead by roughly $227 billion with three trading sessions left before the contract settlement.
Market capitalization means the total stock-market value of a company: share price multiplied by shares outstanding. A $227 billion gap is large in dollar terms, but for companies near $5 trillion, a sharp move in either stock can change the ranking quickly.
Apple is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results on July 30 at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Polymarket’s contract resolves based on which company has the largest market capitalization at the July 31 market close, making Apple’s earnings one of the last major catalysts before the result is decided.
Why AI spending is part of the trade
Nvidia has been one of the biggest winners of the artificial intelligence buildout because its chips power many AI data centers. Decrypt reported that Nvidia’s data-center revenue rose 75% to $62.3 billion in its latest reported quarter, showing that demand for AI infrastructure remains strong.
That strength has also made Nvidia more exposed to worries about AI capital expenditure, or capex. Capex is money companies spend on long-lived assets such as chips, servers and data centers. Reuters has estimated that five major cloud companies could spend more on capex than they generate in free cash flow by 2027.
Nvidia shares have faced pressure as investors questioned reports that the chipmaker could provide a roughly $250 billion financial backstop for an OpenAI data-center project. That has fed concerns that AI companies may be financing their own customers, a structure investors tend to examine closely because it can blur the line between organic demand and demand supported by supplier funding.
Apple has taken a different path. The company unveiled a rebuilt Siri in early June with conversational features and personal-context awareness, while relying partly on outside AI models and smaller systems that run on devices, according to Decrypt. That approach has drawn criticism from investors who wanted Apple to move faster in AI, but it also means Apple is not as directly tied to the most expensive part of the AI infrastructure cycle.
The July finish will come down to stock prices at the close, not which company has the stronger AI story. For now, Polymarket traders are pricing Apple as the favorite, with Nvidia still close enough for the ranking to change before the deadline.
This story draws on original reporting from Decrypt.
