Loser wins: how Apple was able to turn the backlash in the AI race to its advantage

Throughout February, investors have been rushing from extreme to extreme over fears about artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop, are there any companies that have not yet been affected by traders' nervousness? Yes, one of them is Apple. Strangely enough, it is now benefiting from the fact that it lagged behind the leaders in AI development and was not too connected with the probable consequences of its implementation.

"It feels like investors are nosing around the market like a chicken with its head cut off," wrote Jon Treacy, publisher of Fuller Treacy Money, an investment newsletter, on Feb. 25.

On the one hand, he writes, they fear that advances in AI will destroy the economy and lead to mass unemployment. A report by a little-known analyst firm, Citrini Research, added fuel to the fire. Although its authors indicated at the outset that "this is a scenario, not a prediction," their thinking "has everyone fearing that life as we know it is ending," notes Treacy.

At the same time, the market has been gripped by fears that the costs of developing the very AI tools that will turn things upside down are prohibitive. "Whether investors will be willing to sacrifice several hundred billion dollars to realize OpenAI's ambitions is a very big question," notes Treacy.

Citrini's publication "Global Intelligence Crisis 2028" brought down the stocks of companies whose businesses could allegedly be disrupted by the proliferation of AI agents - from delivery services like DoorDash and Uber and software makers like Salesforce and ServiceNow to payment processors Visa, Mastercard, American Express and private equity funds like Blackstone and KKR.

That reaction shocked even the report's chief author and Citrini founder James van Geelen. "If I'd known the stock was going to jump like that because of him, I wouldn't have posted it for free," van Geelen told Bloomberg.

"The market is clearly nervous about this... Anxiety reached a climax when our article pointed to a worst-case scenario," he added.

Over the past week, there have been many critical comments on the authors' vision of a world in which, as Mikael Gorsky, a lecturer at the Holon Institute of Technology and AI researcher, writes, "beings devoid of bodily experience penetrate all spheres of human activity". Thus, Pierre Jared, acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, called the report science fiction that violates basic economic principles.

"AI can either be a disruptive innovation that will increase production, increase revenues ... or an innovation that ultimately fails to live up to its promise," Yared said.

Shares of AI chip maker Nvidia fell 5.5% on Thursday, February 26, following the release of its quarterly reports, despite excellent but unimpressive results that failed to impress investors. Shares of Salesforce, one of the main victims of the recent "software apocalypse," jumped 3.9% on Thursday after the previous day it confirmed its revenue target of $63 billion in 2030, while analysts expected $60.3 billion.

Not long ago, it was thought that the same software vendors would be among the most obvious beneficiaries of the AI boom, while hardware would become a unified and universally available commodity, and AI agents would be less important than the services built on top of them, recalls Treacy. Right now, it's exactly the opposite perception, he points out: "What this tells us is that there is no clear vision of the future, but its potential options are provoking strong emotional reactions. Traders rush from one extreme to the other, which leads to sharp jumps in quotations".

Where in the tech sector can investors find an island of stability on which to weather the AI storm?

For example, in Apple shares, Bloomberg and the investment website Motley Fool point out. The correlation of this company's securities with the Nasdaq-100 index has fallen to the level of 2006 - when it had not even introduced its first iPhone yet, the agency calculated: this "gives investors an attractive alternative to the AI-induced volatility that has plagued most other segments of the stock market in recent weeks".

In mid-February, the correlation over the previous 40 trading days fell to 0.21 (a value of 1 means that the prices of two instruments are changing synchronously, and minus 1 means that they are moving in diametrically opposite directions). The correlation has been declining since Ma last year, when it stood at 0.92, and this is largely due to Apple's decision to "sit out the AI arms race."

The lack of correlation between Apple stock and the index right now is "100 percent positive," Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, "With AI, we're in a situation that resembles a cat-and-mouse game. Investors are so nervous about which next sector will fall victim to it that they shoot first and ask questions later."

Apple is not yet affected by doubts over whether AI will undermine its business and recoup its giant investment.

The iPhone and MacBook maker, although it is developing AI (and even announced in 2025 that it will invest $500 billion in the U.S. economy in the next four years), but unlike other Internet giants, it has not yet invested colossal sums in its development. For example, at the end of fiscal 2025 (ended in September), Apple's capital expenditures amounted to $12.72 billion. For comparison, Alphabet, Google's parent company, had a figure of $91.45 billion. "Compared to Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, Apple spends virtually nothing," CNBC writes. In the year alone, this Big Tech foursome intends to spend more than $650 billion on AI investments.

Apple also doesn't have major business lines that could be at risk from companies like Anthropic, for example, with its Claude AI model, which in recent weeks has called into question the survival of software developers. Or fintech startup Altruist, which unveiled its Hazel tax and financial planning tool and thereby brought down the shares of wealth management companies.

In January, Apple reported record quarterly sales (total revenue growth of 16%, iPhone sales jumped 23%), gave a forecast for the current quarter that exceeded expectations, and in early March plans to present new products, notes Bloomberg.

Apple shares are up 17% over the past six months, strongly outperforming the Nasdaq-100 (+8%) as well as AI-related companies such as Nvidia (+8.5%), Microsoft (-22%) and Meta Platforms (-11.3%), The Motley Fool wrote on Feb. 23.

The company also plans to release several new products in 2026, such as a low-cost MacBook laptop and an iPhone 17e priced below flagship models, notes the Motley Fool: if users like them, "that could be a significant boost to the stock - regardless of what happens with AI."

The Motley Fool and Bloomberg highlight separate risks for Apple, such as problems with integrating AI into Siri virtual assistant. The company is also developing three AI-powered hardware devices - it's unclear how they will be adopted.

Apple shares could also rise less if the tech sector gains traction and regains investor favor, says Hogan of B. Riley Wealth, "But I don't think they will be sold, for they are in the top list of companies whose business does not appear to be dependent on artificial intelligence."

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor