Google beats Apple in market cap for first time since 2019: Gemini 3 and all that is driving big growth 'threatening' OpenAI and Nvidia

Google is CRUSHING and CRUISING. For the first time since 2019, the search giant beat Apple on Wall Street. Google parent company Alphabet saw its market capitalization surpass that of iPhone-maker Apple

for the first time since 2019. According to a report in CNBC, Alphabet’s market cap closed at $3.88 trillion on Wednesday, January 7. Alphabet stock increased more than 2%, closing at $322.03. Meanwhile, Apple’s market cap closed at $3.84 trillion as shares fell over 4% over the last five days.

Shares of Alphabet jumped as much as 65% in 2025, the company’s sharpest rally since 2009, when the stock doubled coming out of the financial crisis. The performance comes after a tough start to the year, as Google closed out 2025 with its strongest performance — from Wall Street’s perspective. Among the eight tech companies valued at over $1 trillion, Alphabet was by far the biggest gainer.

Google Gemini momentum has been the biggest story of 2025

Google ended 2025 as one of the top performers on Wall Street, making a grand AI (artificial intelligence) comeback. In August, Google launched image generator Nano Banana, a Gemini feature that allows users to use AI to generate images. The feature went viral soon after launch. By the end of the following month, the Gemini app surpassed 5 billion images and dethroned OpenAI’s ChatGPT at the top of Apple’s App Store. In December 2025, Google rolled out Gemini 3 to rave reviews. Google launched Gemini 3 almost eight months after rolling out Gemini 2.5.

Gemini 3's success is said to have made OpenAI CEO Sam Altman send 'Code Red' warning to company's employees.

Not just in AI, Google is also making rapid strides on hardware front. In November, the company unveiled Ironwood, the seventh generation of its Tensor Processing Units (TPU), a custom AI chip that has emerged as a potential alternative to chip giant Nvidia’s offerings. Google has also signed Meta as one of its TPU customers. The news wiped billions from Nvidia market cap. Not just this, it also made Nvidia issue a public clarification claiming how and why Google TPUs do not threaten the company.

Analysts have also highlighted Google’s broad strength in cloud computing, where it’s chasing Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and the company’s leadership in robotaxis through Waymo as drivers boosting company's stock in 2025.

CEO Sundar Pichai on strong demand

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has repeatedly said that the company is responding to soaring demand. During October earnings call, he said that Google’s cloud business signed more deals over $1 billion in 2025 through the third quarter of the year than in the two prior years combined.

As for Apple, iPhone 17 sales are off to a strong start. This bodes well for Apple's fiscal 2026 potential. However, Apple has remained largely absent from the tech industry’s AI race that kicked off when OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. But rumours say that Apple may tap Google here now as the company has promised to launch the “more personal Siri” in 2026. This again is likely a win-win for Google and Apple both.