EL7 Research · Equities

Sunday 1 November 2026 · Ahead of Apple results on Monday evening · Prices through the 30 October close

Spending less in a year than Microsoft spends in a month: how did Apple weather the AI sell-off and reclaim the market-cap lead?

Apple heads into its fiscal Q4 results on Monday evening, 2 November, as the world's most valuable company again. While Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta together spent $615.36 billion on assets over twelve months, Apple 10.04 billion was all Apple spent, with growth in its AI spending appearing mainly in research and development and rented computing capacity. October suggests the market punished spending less for its own sake than for exceeding cash generation, while December-quarter margins remain the real test of this model.

10.04

Apple capital expenditure over 12 months, in billions of dollars

615.36

Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta spending over the same period

+3.49%

Apple shares in October, versus −5.30% for the Nasdaq index

5.03

Apple market capitalisation in trillions of dollars, by our calculation

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