Apple raked in €120bn in the final three months of last year – or more than €1bn a day – as the iPhone maker continued its push into artificial intelligence, writes Jessica Clark.

In a turbulent week for US tech, the Silicon Valley giant last night posted a 4pc jump in sales for the three months to December.

The record revenue came during Apple’s most important quarter, which included Christmas and the first full three-month period of new iPhone sales.

And it comes after Silicon Valley was rocked this week by the launch of an AI chatbot developed by Chinese firm DeepSeek.

Investors were spooked by claims it could compete with US rivals including Chat GPT for a fraction of the cost.

The debut sparked a tech selloff, with Nvidia setting a record for the biggest one-day market capitalisation drop when nearly €600bn was wiped off its value.

The rout was described as a “wake-up call” for US tech by President Donald Trump.

But Apple was one of the few tech stocks to see its shares rise. It has not pumped as much money into AI as Meta, Microsoft and Google, and analysts said the emergence of DeepSeek could provide an opportunity.

Apple’s AI tools for the iPhone launched for some users last year but have been beset by glitches.

The results came the day after Microsoft, the largest investor in ChatGPT owner OpenAI, posted a 12pc quarterly sales boost to €66bn and Facebook owner Meta reported revenues of €46bn.