List of Trillion-Dollar Companies: Who Are They & Who is Next?
Trillion-dollar companies are a relatively new concept, as company valuations have only surpassed these milestones in recent years for the first time. What exactly trillion-dollar companies are is explained in this article, and a list of some trillion-dollar companies is also provided.
Table of Contents
What is a Trillion-Dollar Company?
Trillion-dollar companies are publicly listed with a market capitalisation above $1 trillion. The market capitalisation is simply the product of a company’s share price times the number of existing shares. This number represents the total ‘worth’ of the company.
Are there any trillion-dollar companies?
There are a handful of trillion-dollar companies, most of which are American tech giants, like Microsoft and Alphabet. Some other trillion-dollar companies are Saudi Aramco and PetroChina.
What was the first trillion-dollar company?
The first trillion-dollar company was PetroChina, which reached the milestone valuation in 2007 on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The first American company to surpass a trillion dollars was Apple in 2018.
List of Trillion-dollar Companies
Below is a list of some publicly traded trillion-dollar companies. It should be noted that stock prices are volatile, and a declining share price could lead any of these businesses to fall below the $1 trillion mark in the future.
- Microsoft (MSFT)– World’s largest operating system producer
- Apple (AAPL)– Esteemed computer and phone company
- Nvidia (NVDA) – Develops and produces high-end graphics processing units
- Alphabet (GOOG)– Advertising giant with the world’s most well-known search engine
- Amazon (AMZN)– E-commerce company with ventures in audiobooks and web development
- Meta Platforms (META) – Company behind the world’s most popular social media platforms
Microsoft
Market Cap: $3.211 trillion.
Microsoft is perhaps best known for its signature operating system that runs on most of the world’s computers. The company was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and spent the first few decades developing MS-DOS, a frontrunner for Windows, and Windows 95.
After the dot-com bubble, Microsoft put a heavy focus on developing software like the Microsoft Office suite and Internet Explorer. Microsoft has expanded into the gaming space with the Xbox console and acquired several game development studios. More recently, Microsoft launched Azure, its cloud computing service.
Microsoft is currently still the biggest producer of operating systems globally. It has also developed Bing, its search engine, and is busy developing new AI solutions to compete with companies like ChatGPT.
Apple
Market Cap: $2.95 trillion.
Apple was founded in 1976 and debuted the prototype Apple I the same year. The Apple I was one of the first examples of what we now call a personal computer. In just four years the company developed the next iteration, the Apple II, and rose to a valuation of more than 100 million US dollars thanks to its successful marketing and sales of these machines.
Apple developed its flagship operating system, Macintosh, in the decade that followed, which was to compete with Microsoft’s Windows. Later Steve Jobs became CEO of the company and under his guidance Apple released the iPod and iPhone.
Currently, Apple produces and sells all kinds of personal computer devices, like the iMac iPhone. Additionally, Apple has several services like iCloud, Apple Books, Apple Music and Apple TV.
Nvidia
Market Cap: $2.34 trillion.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, who were all three computer engineers. Quickly the three founders decided the right path for the company would involve a focus on graphics-based processing and producing what are now known as GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit).
The company went public in 1999 and released the GeForce 256 the same year, its first product to be expressly called a GPU. The GeForce 256 outperformed its rival by a considerable margin, leading to Nvidia acquiring the contract to develop the graphics processor for Microsoft’s Xbox.
In the past two decades, the company has released numerous GPUs, each time iterating upon previous models, and established itself as the leading company within the computer graphics industry. Its current product range includes the GeForce GPUs, the Nvidia RTX GPUs, solutions for graphics virtualization, software for autonomous vehicles, and datacenter CPUs, among other things.
Alphabet
Market Cap: $2.23 trillion.
Alphabet is the parent company of Google, the company that runs perhaps the world’s best-known search engine. Alphabet is the result of a 2015 business restructuring, Google was founded before the turn of the millennium in 1998.
Google released its first search engine in 1998, and it quickly rose to prominence because of its ability to generate accurate search results. Soon after its launch, the company started incorporating ads into the search results, from which it could generate revenue and keep growing.
Although Google is by far Alphabet’s largest source of revenue, the company has many other ventures, including Calico (research on human ageing), Google Fiber (internet access provider via fibre), and Isomorphic Labs (drug discovery), as well as venture capital divisions for technology companies, among other things.
Amazon
Market Cap $1.9 trillion.
Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who still heads the company in 2024. Originally the company was simply an online bookstore, but quickly grew to sell other items like music and videos in the next several years.
Amazon made efforts to expand in the digital space by launching Amazon Web Services in 2006, which provided APIs for web developers to build web applications that made use of Amazon’s platform. The e-commerce side of the business also kept expanding, and Amazon became the biggest competitor to many mortar-and-brick stores, delivering items right to people’s homes.
Amazon’s biggest source of revenue these days is still its ecommerce platform through which it sells millions of products each year. Other than that, Amazon acquired the supermarket chain Whole Foods and runs several online platforms like Goodreads, Twitch, Audible, and Amazon Web Services, which these days provides on-demand cloud computing.
Meta Platforms
Market Cap: $1.25 trillion.
Meta is the new name of the company formerly known as Facebook, the company that created one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and four other founders, and rapidly became the world’s leading social media and networking platform. The company went public in 2012 with an IPO in which it was valued at $104 billion, setting the record as the largest IPO valuation ever.
Meta’s platform Facebook grew at an unprecedented pace, claiming to have more than 3 billion active users in the year 2022. In the past several years, Facebook underwent a rebranding process, changing its name to Meta and pronouncing a venture into the metaverse, an envisioned Virtual Reality world in which people can live and spend time.
Meta is still king when it comes to social media platforms, as it bought up Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger, some of the world’s most popular messaging and photo-sharing apps. At the moment Meta is pouring a lot of its cash into Research and Development of its envisioned Metaverse, for which it is yet to release any substantial products.
Other trillion-dollar companies
Besides the American tech giants, there are other trillion-dollar companies like Saudi Aramco and PetroChina. However, as these companies are listed in and operate out of countries that place a lot of restrictions on financial investment, it can be difficult for the average investor to acquire shares in these businesses.
How to Invest in Trillion-Dollar Companies
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Conclusion
The list of trillion-dollar companies is likely to expand in the coming years, as stock prices rise and companies continue to grow larger. Some investors question the value proposition of investing in these giant businesses, wondering whether they still have much room to grow.
In the end, none can say for sure whether trillion-dollar companies like Apple or Microsoft have reached their natural limit in terms of valuation, or that these companies can continue to grow in the future. Investors who buy these companies would do well to understand both sides of the argument and decide whether they believe in the long-term growth prospects.
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FAQs on Trillion-dollar Companies
How many trillion-dollar companies are there?
There are currently seven trillion-dollar companies: Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Saudi Aramco, Amazon, and Meta.
Are there any trillion-dollar companies?
Yes, there are currently seven trillion-dollar companies, most of which are tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet.
What are the next trillion-dollar companies?
While no one can predict which companies will rise in valuation and how fast, likely contenders for the next trillion-dollar company are Berkshire Hathaway ($895 billion), TSMC ($793 billion), and Eli Lilly ($763 billion).
Which company has $3 trillion-dollars?
As of May 2024, there is just one company worldwide with a valuation of more than $3 trillion, which is Microsoft, valued at $3.194 trillion.
Is Nvidia a trillion-dollar company?
Yes, Nvidia is a trillion-dollar company in May 2024, standing at a valuation of $2.332 trillion.
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