Blink, and you missed it.

On July 27, Apple briefly became the world’s most valuable company again. It held the title for many years — becoming the world’s first $1 trillion, and then $3 trillion company — before losing the top spot to Nvidia.

Now Apple is working on something that might make it the first $10 trillion company. That may sound crazy, but they’ve already become the second company to achieve a historic $5 trillion valuation.

See, Apple has been very strategic these last few years during the AI race. They weren’t interested in spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to invent their own AI model. Instead, they’ve been biding their time, waiting for the right moment to enter the race.

That time is upon us.

September is going to be a massive month for the company, driven by two major developments inside both Apple’s leadership and its product lineup.

The first just happened on Tuesday, and we’re only a few days away from the second.

Not only will this be big news for Apple, but it’s also going to drive the next stage of the AI story.

First Jobs. Then Cook. Now Him…

Steve Jobs was a legend. He reshaped consumer culture by designing products with a sleek, minimal aesthetic, with beautiful and intuitive user interfaces, backed by brilliant marketing.

But Tim Cook? He proved to be an operational and strategic genius. He never designed a hot product — at least not on the scale of the iPhone or iPad. But he built the most efficient supply chain in the world and turned Apple into a juggernaut, overseeing a more than 1,000% return in the stock.

Apple’s newest CEO will be just as pivotal.

On September 1, John Ternus — their chief hardware engineer and a 25-year Apple veteran — took over as CEO.

He has big shoes to fill. Jobs was a visionary. Cook was the operator.

But Ternus is no slouch. Over the last handful of years, he’s been credited with reversing what was perceived as a period of declining hardware quality. He oversaw the transition from Intel chips to their own in-house Apple Silicon. And today, he controls the products that generate 80% of the company’s revenue.

Now, it’s his job to make Apple the next king of AI.

And we’ve already gotten a glimpse of how he will do it.

Back in June, during Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Cook and Ternus previewed a major overhaul to Apple Intelligence…

An overhaul that is expected to commence with the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max on September 9. Just one week after Ternus takes over.

This timing is not coincidental. This is Apple telling us hardware is the answer to their AI problem.

And there’s a way to invest in it… without needing to own Apple’s stock directly.

The Bottleneck — and the Opportunity

AI, at its core, is just powerful software. But the software can only be as powerful as the hardware that supports it

We’ve seen that on a colossal scale with the AI data center buildout — and how that has benefited stocks like Intel and Micron Technology. Now, Apple has to compress all that computation into a single, handheld device.

This is why Apple is elevating its chief hardware engineer to the top job.

AI has finally started to mature. And in order to keep growing, Apple has no choice but to harness its power. And the only way to do that is with hardware.

Ultimately, the reason why it has taken Apple so long to make its big AI move comes down to historical hardware limitations — limitations that are now being resolved.

Fortunately, one company has spent more than 20 years mastering this exact challenge: cramming the most intelligence into the least power, right there on a single chip. Its technology already sits inside more than a billion devices.

And it just built a dedicated chip for AI robots, running 700 trillion calculations a second, that the most advanced robot makers on Earth, including one backed by Nvidia, Microsoft, and Jeff Bezos, are already using.

That company is Qualcomm (QCOM). Besides robotics hardware, they have a longstanding relationship with Apple and supply them with radio frequency (RF) chips. These chips work alongside the cellular 5G modem inside the iPhone to connect to the Internet.

This is critical for AI, which can only work as fast as it can download data from the cloud. The RF chips and 5G modem work hand-in-hand to unlock full AI capabilities on the iPhone.

Qualcomm has the potential to triple, or even quadruple if Apple doubles. And that’s just one way to play it.

I’ve been researching much smaller companies that will be essential to unlocking Apple’s next wave of growth. Expect to hear more about these opportunities soon.

Why I’ll Be First in Line

Long story short, starting September 9, we’re going to begin seeing new AI capabilities in the next generation of iPhone.

Helping us plan trips… book reservations… order food…

Think about all the stuff you manually do on your iPhone now. Now, imagine just being able to tell Siri to do it for you.

This is the breakthrough that’s going to cause people to fall in love with AI.

I have never been the type to camp outside a Best Buy the night before an iPhone launch to be first in line — or ever really care about a new iPhone to begin with. I bought the iPhone X and had it for five years. I’ve had my current iPhone for two years.

But I’m buying the iPhone 18 Pro the week it comes out.