Wedbush remains steadfast in its belief in AI: Apple's market value will reach $4 trillion next year, with NVIDIA following closely behind

According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives stated that Apple (AAPL.US) is expected to become the first company to reach a market value of $4 trillion by 2025, followed by NVIDIA (NVDA.US).

The research firm believes that Apple's "detractors" have overlooked its installation base of over 2 billion iOS devices, with approximately 300 million iPhones in the upgrade opportunity window. The company's services business is valued at $2 trillion, and consumer artificial intelligence (AI) also needs to run through its ecosystem.

Wedbush maintains an "outperform" rating on Apple with a target price of $300.

Wedbush also added that driven by the artificial intelligence-driven upgrade cycle, Apple's iPhone sales in 2025 may exceed 240 million units, which could be the highest year of iPhone sales in the company's history.

Wedbush believes that within the upgrade window in 2025 alone, iPhone sales in China could reach 100 million units.

Wedbush also noted Apple's iOS 18.2 update, stating that the next operating system update will usher in a new era for the tech giant.

Wedbush said: "This will be a multi-year artificial intelligence journey that will define Apple's future through next-generation chip architecture, hardware releases, and iPhone models built around artificial intelligence foundations, with many consumers ultimately embracing artificial intelligence."

The $4 Trillion Milestone

As one of Wall Street's most famous tech analysts, Ives is not the first to predict that Apple will reach a market value of $4 trillion.

In December 2023, he predicted that by the end of 2024, Apple would become the first publicly traded company to reach a market value of $4 trillion, citing its rapid growth and monetization speed.

In June 2024, Ives called Apple's announcement about its artificial intelligence capabilities a "historic moment," noting that this would be the catalyst for Apple to reach a $4 trillion market value within a year.

Earlier this month, Wedbush stated that Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft (MSFT.US) are clearly leading the race in artificial intelligence spending and that one of these seven giants is expected to reach the $4 trillion market value milestone in the next 6 to 9 months.

NVIDIA Following Closely

Wedbush predicts that NVIDIA will follow Apple to join the $4 trillion market value club by 2025.

Last Friday, this chip giant briefly surpassed Apple to become the world's most valuable company. In June of this year, NVIDIA briefly became the most valuable company by market capitalization, before being surpassed by Microsoft and Apple.

NVIDIA is seen as the biggest winner of the artificial intelligence revolution, with its market value more than doubling in less than a year. At this time last year, NVIDIA's market value reached $1 trillion.

In contrast, Apple reached the $3 trillion market value milestone in July 2023. A year ago, Microsoft's market value was around $2.5 trillion Back in 2019, none of these companies had a market value of 1 trillion US dollars. At that time, NVIDIA's market value was only around 100 billion US dollars