Who Owns Apple Stock? Top 10 Largest AAPL Shareholders

Throughout the years, institutional and individual Apple shareholders have had an important impact on the company's growth. This article explains the history of Apple and its history with its shareholders. It also provides a list of the biggest institutional shareholders as well as the largest individual shareholders. 

Key Takeaways 

• Apple (AAPL) has around 23,763 shareholders, at the time of writing.
• Around 25% of the total amount of Apple shares are owned by the top five largest institutional and individual shareholders. 
• The top five institutional shareholders include Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, State Street Corp. and Geode Capital Management.
• The top five individual shareholders include Arthur Levinson, Tim Cook, Jeffrey Williams, Albert A. Gore Jr. and Katherine Adams.

Apple Shareholders Ownership Structure 

The Apple I personal computer, invented by Steve Wozniak, came to market in 1976, marking the beginning of the Apple Computer Company. The company was founded by Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. In 1977, the microcomputer Apple II was introduced, which played an important role in the success of Apple. In the same year, the company became Apple Computer Inc. and Wayne sold the 10% of shares he held to the other two founders. Also in 1977, private investor Mike Markkula invested $250,000, which played an important role in the further growth and professionalisation of the company. 

At the end of 1980, the company went public with an Initial Public Offering (IPO) price of $22 per share. The IPO attracted many individual shareholders as well as institutional shareholders. With their voting power, big investors often played important roles in decision-making. With the IPO also came more financial freedom, which Apple invested in development, acquisitions and further research. As the company grew between the 1980s and 1990s, Apple started to attract more investors such as pension funds, mutual funds, and others. 

Steve Jobs played a significant role in the vision for the company, the designs of the products, and marketing. In 1985 however, Jobs left Apple to found NeXT, inc. With his departure, the strategy and performance of Apple declined, and this influenced the ownership distribution as well as the stock price. In 1997, when Apple was just a hair away from bankruptcy, the company bought NeXT and with that, Jobs returned to Apple as an advisor and eventually became its CEO. One year later, the iMac was introduced, and the success of this computer finally stabilised the finances of Apple. 

In 2011, Steve Jobs passed away and some expected that Apple would see a decline, but it remained relatively stable due to the transition plan towards the new CEO Tim Cook. In the years that followed, Apple continued to launch new products and its stock price continued to rise. More recently, the revenue saw a peak in 2022 and declined a bit after. Regardless, the stock prices have increased.

Apple Shareholders: Top 5 Institutional Owners

Below you will find the five largest institutional shareholders of Apple. Please take note that the amount of shares as well as the price per share can always change. At the time of writing this, one share is $195.41. 

1. Vanguard Group

Apple’s biggest shareholder is Vanguard Group, which was founded in 1975 and is one of the world’s largest investment management companies. Vanguard is owned by its shareholders with a mutual company structure. The company is known for its focus on low-cost index funds and ETFs. Institutional and individual investors use Vanguard to invest in products and services such as retirement planning, brokerage services and ETFs. Vanguard holds about 1.3 billion Apple shares, which is 8.6% of the total stock and $254 billion. 

2. BlackRock Inc 

BlackRock Inc. was founded in 1988 and is the biggest asset management company worldwide. The company is known for risk management, financial technology and investment strategies. Institutional and individual investors can invest in a multitude of products and services like advisory services, ETFs and alternative investments. BlackRock holds about 810 million Apple shares, which is 5.3% of the total and worth about $158 billion. 

3. Berkshire Hathaway 

The multinational conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway was founded in 1839 when it was still a textile manufacturing company. The company grew and expanded to several other industries including railroads, retail, and insurance. Berkshire Hathaway holds stakes in many different companies, including Apple, and this made it one of the most successful companies in the world. Berkshire Hathaway holds about 789 million Apple shares, which is 5.1% of the total and worth about $154 billion. 

4. State Street Corp. 

State Street Corp was founded in 1792 and is one of the oldest financial institutions in America. This institution offers investments to institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies, regarding services such as management, trading, analytics. The company is also known to be a custodian bank. State Street holds about 589 million Apple shares, which is 3.8% of the total and worth about $115 billion. 

5. Geode Capital Management 

The investment management firm Geode Capital Management was founded in 2001 and offers institutional investors index funds and quantitative funds. It is known for using quantitative investment strategies to analyse the market and notice opportunities for investing. Geode Capital Management holds about 308 million Apple shares, which is 2.0% of the total and is currently worth about $60 billion. 

Apple Shareholders: Top 5 Individual Owners

Below you will find the five largest individual shareholders of Apple. The total shareholders' amounts were calculated with the current price per share of $195.41. 

1. Arthur Levinson 

Originally chairman and CEO of biotech company Genentech, Arthur Levinson became chairman of the board at Apple in 2011. As chairman at Apple, he secured 4.43 million shares, which is 0.029% of the total. At the time of writing, one share is $195.41, meaning that the shares of Levinson currently amount to $866 million.

2. Tim Cook 

Tim Cook has been the CEO of Apple since 2011 and took over shortly before Steve Jobs’ death. Before becoming the CEO Cook was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Apple. At the time of writing, Cook holds 3.28 million Apple shares. This makes for a shareholding of $640 million and represents 0.021% of the total shares. 

3. Jeffrey Williams 

As COO of Apple, Jeff Williams is responsible for the entire worldwide operations of Apple, as well as customer support. The number of shares Williams has is 489,817, which is 0.003% of all Apple shares, and totals to an amount of $96 million. 

4. Albert A. Gore Jr. 

Al Gore is known to be the Vice President of the United States and later as a climate activist, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He has been part of the board at Apple since 2003. Gore has 468,995 shares, which is approximately 0.003% and totals an amount of $92 million. 

5. Katherine Adams 

Currently, the general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Global Security, Katherine Adams came to Apple in 2017. She is part of the executive team and oversees the legal matters of the company. She owns 293,266 shares, which is 0.001% and worth about $57 million. 

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Conclusion 

The top five institutional and top five individual shareholders together hold about 25% of Apple’s shares. With recent developments in technology, the future of Apple could go both ways: some investors will say that Apple has a future of stable financial performance, while others are concerned about the competitive landscape that Apple is in, citing increasing competitive pressures from newly-forming technology companies 

It is up to the institutional and individual investors to determine for themselves if they believe in the growth of Apple in the long term.

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FAQs on Largest Apple Shareholders

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