The new AI rally is leaving Apple behind, at least for now

Apple ‘s stock appears to have missed out on the latest leg of the artificial intelligence craze. Time will tell if the company is truly falling behind or just preparing instead for the next stage of the technology cycle. Shares of Apple are headed for their fourth straight losing week and are down nearly 11% so far in January, while stocks more directly tied to AI have rallied. Nvidia ‘s stock has jumped more than 9% month to date. Oracle is up almost 12% in the period. Stocks tied to quantum computing and energy for data centers are also climbing. AAPL 1M mountain Apple’s stock is off to a rough start in 2025. The latest news in the AI space is Stargate , the partnership between Oracle, Japanese investment firm SoftBank and OpenAI that plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building out the infrastructure for data centers and high-end computing. Apple is not directly part of that program, which looks to be more of an industrialization project rather than something in the company’s typical wheelhouse. At the same time, the preliminary AI integrations for Apple’s products appear to be making little impression on consumers. “Some consumers intentionally shop for AI-enabled products, with ~15% of all respondents buying an Apple product or a laptop specifically because of AI functionality. However, ~60% of those who purchased an AI-enabled product did so without realizing, and ~60% of all electronics purchasers did not buy or are unaware if they bought an AI-enabled product,” Morgan Stanley analyst Simeon Gutman said in a note to clients Wednesday, citing survey data from Numerator. It is still early in the development of both AI chatbots and their deployment on smartphones. Investors could flock back to Apple as those details become more clear. “Market sentiment should improve in the middle of the year, which is also a seasonally strong period for the stock, when concerns around Apple Intelligence’s limited impact on iPhone demand and China competition will likely be replaced by a focus on the new slate of Apple Intelligence features revealed at WWDC 2025, the launch of new Mac, iPad, and iPhone SE products in Spring 2025, and potential for new product features for the iPhone 17/18 (Fall 2025/26),” Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Ng wrote in a note to clients Thursday. From a broader lens, Apple’s struggles could put a governor on the overall market rally. Even with its recent decline, Apple is still one of the largest stocks in the world, and key part of most Americans’ retirement accounts. “As a cautionary chart to look at, check out Apple, which is still equally important to the S & P, if not more so, than Nvidia,” Fairlead Strategies founder Katie Stockton told CNBC’s Sarah Min.