Stocks

Berkshire Joins the $1 Trillion Club: How Long Did It Take?

Published

1 week ago

August 28, 2024

Marcus Lu

Graphics/Design:

Sam Parker

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

How Long it Took U.S. Companies to Reach a $1 Trillion Valuation

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

On Aug. 28, 2024, Berkshire Hathaway made history by becoming the eighth U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market valuation. This happened early in the day, as Berkshire’s Class A shares (BRK.A) touched $699,699.

Berkshire has a dual-class share structure, in which Class A shares are the original stock offering which began trading in 1980. Class B shares were issued in 1996 and offer a smaller stake in the company.

To put this achievement into perspective, we visualized the time it took for other American companies to reach their trillion-dollar status, using data compiled by Investopedia.

Data and Key Takeaways

All of the data we used to create this graphic is listed in the table below.

Company	IPO Date	$1T Date	Time
Berkshire Hathaway	Mar. 16, 1980	Aug. 28, 2024	44 years, 5 months, 13 days
Apple	Dec. 18, 1980	Aug. 2, 2018	37 years, 7 months, 15 days
Microsoft	Mar. 13, 1986	April 25, 2019	33 years, 1 month, 12 days
Nvidia	Jan. 22, 1999	May 30, 2023	24 years, 4 months, 8 days
Amazon	May 15, 1997	Sept. 4, 2018	21 years, 3 months, 20 days
Google	Aug. 9, 2004	Jan. 16, 2020	15 years, 5 months, 7 days
Tesla	June 29, 2010	Oct. 26, 2021	11 years, 3 months, 26 days
Meta	May 18, 2012	June 28, 2021	9 years, 1 month, 10 days

From this dataset we can see that Berkshire Hathaway is the first non-tech company in the U.S. to hit this milestone. It’s not the first globally, though, as that title belongs to Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco.

Berkshire is best described as a conglomerate, meaning it owns controlling shares in many smaller companies. These companies often belong to different industries, providing the conglomerate with the benefits of diversification.

Some notable subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway are Geico Insurance, Dairy Queen, Duracell, and Benjamin Moore. To see a full list, visit Berkshire’s official website.

Zuckerberg Wins the Race

This graphic also highlights Meta as the fastest U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion valuation. Again, it’s not the fastest globally, considering Saudi Aramco went public at an initial valuation already over the mark, at $1.8 trillion.

Meta has been on a wild ride in recent years, with its valuation surpassing $1 trillion in the summer of 2021, cratering to $240 billion in the fall of 2022, then joining the $1 trillion club again in early 2024.