Julie Morgan

Alphabet is now the world's second most valuable company and is worth more than Apple for the first time since 2019.

Shares of Alphabet rose more than 2% on Wednesday, lifting its market cap to $3.89 trillion.

Apple's market cap now stands at $3.86 trillion,

after a 0.8% drop in its share price on Wednesday.

Wall Street analysts have noted that Alphabet's Gemini is quickly closing the gap with OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is currently the top AI model.

In addition, Alphabet is looking to challenge NVIDIA's dominance in the AI computing market with its custom tensor processing units.

But Apple has lagged its rivals in the AI race, and the iPhone maker has not made a major AI launch since it announced Apple Intelligence in 2024.

Now I have a few other articles that are trending on seeking alpha.

Nvidia is reportedly seeking full upfront payment for H200 AI chips in China.

Samsung is projecting a threefold increase in profit on the AI boom.

And a judge says that Elon Musk lawsuit against OpenAI will head to trial.

A couple of items to tell you about on our Catalyst Watch for the Day.

The ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium will begin.

Some of the notable companies with abstracts or drug data presentations include Astellas Pharma, Alpha Tau Medical, Autonomix Medical, Renovo RX, and Bullfrog AI.

And Marks & Spencer is scheduled to release its Christmas trading statement.

On Wall Street at this early hour, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the red.

Crude oil is up 1% at $56 a barrel.

Bitcoin is down 1.2% at $90,000.

Gold is down 0.5% at $44.30.

The FTSE 100 is down 0.3% and the DAX is up 0.1%.