{"id":678444,"date":"2026-11-08T08:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T08:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/678444\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T08:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T08:20:12","slug":"the-magnificent-one-apple-is-winning-by-sitting-out-the-ai-spending-race-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/678444\/","title":{"rendered":"The magnificent one: Apple is winning by sitting out the AI spending race \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Forget the magnificent seven. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/apple\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/apple\">Apple<\/a> has become the magnificent one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Up over 25 per cent in 2026, the iPhone maker is back on top of the stock market, with a valuation of $5 trillion putting it ahead of Nvidia. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Creative Planning strategist Charlie Bilello recently noted Apple was the only magnificent seven stock to outperform the S&amp;P 500 this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The contrast with 2025 is striking. \u201cAI is turning Apple into a market \u2018loser\u2019\u201d, headlined Axios in July 2025, a message echoed by Bloomberg (\u201cApple faces calls to reboot AI strategy with shares slumping\u201d). <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Criticised for spending too little on AI, Apple now benefits as investors fret about how much its rivals are spending. Apple generates more free cash flow than any other magnificent seven member, while avoiding the AI spending binge \u201cdraining\u201d its peers, says Bilello. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta spent a combined $202 billion on capital expenditure in the third quarter alone, more than double the year-earlier figure. Concerns over Alphabet\u2019s cash burn sent its shares down 19 per cent in October, their worst-ever monthly performance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Apple, which reported earnings on Monday, has essentially become a hedge against the AI trade, outperforming the Nasdaq-100 by almost 20 percentage points over the past six months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Given its recent run, with shares up 25 per cent since June and $1 trillion added to its market value, Apple has arguably done well simply to hold on to those gains amid the recent market turbulence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ironically, the flight to safety has not come cheap. Apple trades at 36 times expected earnings, almost twice the S&amp;P 500 multiple. Apple\u2019s AI issues remain, but its reluctance to spend heavily is looking less foolish as the bills mount up elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forget the magnificent seven. Apple has become the magnificent one. Up over 25 per cent in 2026, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,936,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-678444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-apple","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}