On Thursday, January 11, Microsoft briefly took over from Apple the title of the most valuable company in the world, reaching a capitalization of $2.9 trillion. This is reported by the Financial Times.
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Microsoft shares have risen sharply since last year thanks to the company's first position in the field of generative artificial intelligence due to investments in OpenAI, a company that developed chat ChatGPT bot.
In total, Microsoft invested $13 billion in Sam Altman's OpenAI.
In January 2023, Microsoft entered into an agreement with the Californian startup, which the media assessed at $10 billion. Later, OpenAI's developments appeared in the tech giant's products, including GPT-4 in the Bing search engine.
The corporation's cloud digital infrastructure division also received a boost from renewed business interest in artificial intelligence.
Apple's problems
In parallel, Apple faced investor dissatisfaction due to low iPhone sales 15 in the Chinese market. This is mainly due to competition from local companies like Huawei.
Apple is also lagging behind in the artificial intelligence race. Although the company has its own voice assistant Siri, it has not yet announced new AI products.
This is expected to happen this year when the new operating system iOS 18 is released. As per tradition, it will be available for everyone with with the release of the iPhone 16.
Since the beginning of the new year, Apple shares have fallen by 4% after a series of downgrades by financial analysts. This led to a reduction in market capitalization by approximately $100 billion.
Struggle for leadership
Microsoft and Apple have repeatedly changed places in the ranking of the most valuable companies. It is worth noting that Microsoft took the leading positions in 2018 and 2021.
