Apple surges past Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company

Prepare yourself for not-so-shocking news: Apple is worth a lot of freaking money.

The tech giant surged to a record high on Wednesday, trading at about $218 per share by midday. That brought its market cap to around $3.34 trillion, making it the highest-valued company in the world and surging past Microsoft, which boasts a market cap of approximately $3.26 trillion.

So, yes, Apple is back on top.

The surge in share price follows the company’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), in which it revealed iOS 18 and focused particularly on AI — much like, well, every single other tech event for the past year.

Apple’s AI — dubbed Apple Intelligence — promised to be deeply integrated into Apple devices. This AI can do everything from prioritize notifications on your iPhone to proofread text, record calls, and generate transcripts of Voice Notes.

Whether Apple’s AI push proves successful is an open question, but investors seem to be pleased for now. Wall Street and Silicon Valley appear in lockstep on backing the industry’s so-called AI revolution, whether or not normal folks really want it.

Anyway, Apple is worth more than Microsoft now. At least until the next tech event.