After years of excitement driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, technology stocks are getting clobbered. The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100<\/strong> index is down about 3% year to date, and 4.5% in the past five days. Major AI hyperscalers like Alphabet<\/strong>, Amazon<\/strong>, Meta Platforms<\/strong>, and Microsoft<\/strong> have all lost value in the past five days, with Microsoft down more than 10%.<\/p>\n Investors are getting skittish about AI stocks<\/a> because of the huge capital expenditures they are laying out to build AI data centers. For example, Alphabet announced strong fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 4, with a 30% year-over-year increase in net income. But its stock dropped the next day. Investors apparently are concerned about Alphabet’s plans to spend $175 billion to $185 billion on capex in 2026. That would be more than Alphabet’s entire net income for 2025 ($132 billion).<\/p>\n An even bigger downturn is hitting software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF<\/strong>, which has software majors like Microsoft, Salesforce<\/strong>, and ServiceNow<\/strong> in its portfolio, is down about 25% year to date.<\/p>\n The overall narrative about these software stocks is that new AI tools are becoming so powerful that they might be able to replace the products that most enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS)<\/a> companies sell, or seriously disrupt their business models. Commentators are calling this tech sell-off the “SaaSpocalypse.”<\/p>\n But one prominent tech stock has so far avoided the worst of this downturn. Apple<\/strong> (AAPL<\/a> +0.87%<\/span>)<\/span> is up 1.5% year to date, and up 36% in the past six months, strongly outperforming the Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500<\/strong> indexes.<\/p>\n Here are two big reasons why Apple stock is avoiding the AI-driven SaaSpocalypse.<\/p>\n Today’s Change<\/p>\n (0.87%) $2.40<\/p>\n Current Price<\/p>\n $278.31<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Market Cap<\/p>\n $4.1T<\/p>\n Day’s Range<\/p>\n $276.93 – $280.91<\/p>\n 52wk Range<\/p>\n $169.21 – $288.62<\/p>\n Volume<\/p>\n 2.9M<\/p>\n Avg Vol<\/p>\n 48M<\/p>\n Gross Margin<\/p>\n 47.33%<\/p>\n Dividend Yield<\/p>\n 0.37%<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n On Jan. 29, Apple reported impressive earnings for its fiscal 2026 first quarter. The company achieved a 16% year-over-year increase in quarterly revenue and an 18% increase in diluted earnings per share. Net income was $42.1 billion for the quarter, up about 16% from the previous year.<\/p>\n In a press release, CEO Tim Cook said that the iPhone had its “best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment.” Apple’s services segment also achieved record revenue, up 14% year over year.<\/p>\n Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Unlike some big tech companies<\/a> that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on new data centers, Apple has held itself apart from the AI frenzy. This company doesn’t sell AI hype; it sells hardware. About 60% of its net sales came from the iPhone in the latest quarter.<\/p>\n Earlier in 2025, Apple was widely criticized for not having a robust enough AI strategy. Its latest updates to Siri and Apple Intelligence were disappointing even to many longtime Apple fans. But Apple only spent $12.7 billion on capital expenditures in its most recent fiscal year — a small fraction of what Alphabet intends to spend in 2026.<\/p>\n Unless new advances in AI make people no longer want to buy iPhones, it appears that Apple is poised for continued success. This stock could be a good pick to thrive beyond any AI bubble<\/a> or SaaSpocalypse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ben Gran<\/a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" … ) boom, technology<\/span> stocks are getting clobbered. The tech<\/span>-heavy Nasdaq-100 … ) companies. The iShares Expanded Tech<\/span> Software ETF, which has software … . Commentators are calling this tech<\/span> sell-off the " … quot; Unlike some big tech<\/span> companies that are spending …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Key Data Points<\/h3>\n
Apple is generating strong growth<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Apple is a hardware company, not an “AI stock”<\/h2>\n