Apple touches $5 trillion market cap and one of the reasons is what has made Wall Street ‘unhappy’ with Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon

Apple shares hit $342.89 on Tuesday, briefly putting the company’s market value at $5.036 trillion. That makes it the second company ever to reach $5 trillion, after Nvidia. The stock closed at $340.08, so the milestone lasted only part of the session. On Monday, Apple had already passed Nvidia to become the world’s most valuable public company again.Apple’s capital expenditure in fiscal 2025 was $12.7 billion. Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta will spend more than $700 billion between them this year, nearly all of it on AI data centres. Twelve months ago that gap was Apple’s biggest problem on Wall Street. It is now the reason investors are buying the stock, and the shift happened almost entirely in the last week.

Why Alphabet’s capex hike changed how investors read AI spending across Big Tech

Alphabet raised the top end of its 2026 capex forecast to $205 billion from $190 billion last Wednesday. Its cloud business grew 82% in the quarter, the fastest since at least 2020. The stock still fell 7% the next day, and took Amazon, Meta and Microsoft down with it.What spooked investors was the debt. Alphabet’s long-term borrowings have risen 111% to $98 billion in six months, and the company posted negative free cash flow last quarter for the first time. Amazon’s long-term debt climbed 81% to $119 billion between December and March. FactSet’s analysts now expect Microsoft’s free cash flow to turn negative in the fourth quarter, which would be a first since at least 2001.

How Apple’s rented AI infrastructure keeps its cash flow intact while rivals borrow

Apple buys compute rather than building it. CFO Kevan Parekh has called it a hybrid model, mixing first and third-party capacity, with Apple silicon running the servers it does own. The Siri overhaul due this fall leans on Google’s AI technology.The result showed up in March: over $28 billion in operating cash flow, capex under $3 billion, almost all of it free cash. “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 is up about 25% this year. Nvidia, which crossed $5 trillion in October, has managed 6%.Microsoft and Meta report Wednesday after the close, Amazon on Thursday. All three are expected to raise spending guidance. Cowen analyst Derrick Wood said another increase would probably trigger more selling.Apple reports Thursday evening, with analysts forecasting revenue growth above 15%. It will be Tim Cook’s last earnings call. John Ternus takes over on September 1.