Apple stock hits all-time high as analysts see AI-driven breakout

Shares of Apple AAPL hit an all-time high on Tuesday after multiple Wall Street firms raised their price targets ahead of the company’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference.

Investors expect Apple to unveil a deeper push into artificial intelligence at the conference.

Apple stock gained roughly 0.9% during early trading and reached a fresh record high at $311.82.

The shares have climbed more than 22% since the start of the second quarter, outperforming several large-cap technology peers and the broader Nasdaq benchmark.

Analysts increasingly believe Apple could emerge as a major beneficiary of the next wave of consumer AI adoption, despite criticism that the company has moved more slowly than rivals in rolling out generative AI products.

Much of the optimism centers around expectations that Apple will introduce a significantly upgraded version of Siri at its developer conference in early June.

Analysts see AI-driven growth opportunity

Wall Street analysts argued that Apple’s strength lies not necessarily in building the most advanced foundational AI models, but in controlling the consumer ecosystem through the iPhone, App Store, payments infrastructure, and privacy-focused services.

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan raised his price target on Apple shares to $380 from $330 while maintaining a Buy rating.

"In an agentic world, value accrues to the platform that controls user intent, personal context, app access, permissions, identity, authentication, payments, and trust," Mohan wrote.

"Smartphone is the scaled consumer device where these factors already converge," he added.

"If AI assistants become the new front door…we think Apple should have meaningful leverage over model providers, app developers, merchants, advertisers, and payment networks."

Mohan said Apple’s upgraded Siri assistant could potentially sit atop Alphabet’s Gemini AI system while maintaining enhanced privacy protections and tighter integration across Apple’s ecosystem.

Bank of America estimated that an agentic version of Siri could add as much as $65 billion in revenue by 2030 and contribute roughly $2 billion in incremental earnings over the next four years.

Melius analyst Ben Reitzes also raised his price target on Apple shares to $385 and forecast fiscal 2028 revenue of approximately $613 billion.

"Apple may be on the brink of some real AI sizzle," Reitzes wrote.

"The world is ready to use voice commands as a computing interface, and Apple may rise to the moment", he added.

Siri and ecosystem integration remain central focus

Analysts suggested Apple’s installed base of roughly 2.5 billion devices could become a major competitive advantage as AI assistants increasingly evolve into consumer-facing operating layers for commerce, apps, scheduling, payments, and search.

Reitzes argued that the upgraded Siri assistant could eventually function as a stand-alone interface capable of replacing services such as ChatGPT for many Apple users.

He described the system as "an agentic interface that can further differentiate the Apple ecosystem and ignite a level of excitement with developers not seen since the early days of the App store."

Analysts also pointed to Apple’s hybrid AI architecture as a differentiator.

The company is expected to rely on a combination of on-device AI processing and private cloud computing infrastructure for more advanced workloads.

"No other consumer technology company has both legs of that architecture under a single trust model, and we think that gap becomes more visible, and more valuable, as agentic complexity scales," Reitzes said.

Mohan similarly argued that Apple’s advantage may ultimately come from controlling the user endpoint rather than building the most advanced AI model itself.

"If agentic AI shifts the market from answering questions to taking actions, the critical control point becomes centered around owning the endpoint," Mohan wrote.

"Apple does not need to own the best frontier model if it owns the trusted interface that routes intent across local models, Apple-controlled cloud models, external models, and app actions", he added.