Technology

Chart: The Largest Companies by Market Cap Over 15 Years

Published

7 years ago

August 12, 2016

Jeff Desjardins

Chart: The Largest Companies by Market Cap Over 15 Years

The Oil Barons have been replaced by the Whiz Kids of Silicon Valley

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

By definition, the largest companies by market cap are the most valued by investors in absolute terms.

Of course, these companies change all the time. Secular trends rise and fall, and economic cycles rinse and repeat. New companies are built, while former “blue chips” may struggle. For every Enron that busts, there’s an Amazon shooting up through the ranks.

At the end of the day, however, a snapshot of the largest companies at a given time tells us what the market valued the most. And as this week’s chart shows, this simple data series can also tell us a surprising amount about the macroeconomic story over recent years.

Energy Downturn, Tech Upturn

In 2001, oil was about $30/bbl. Only one oil company (Exxon) cracked the top five list by market cap at the time.

Fast forward a decade, when oil prices soared to the $100/bbl neighborhood. At this point, three of five of the largest companies by market cap were now in the oil business: Exxon, PetroChina, and Royal Dutch Shell.

And today? We are back at $40/bbl and no energy companies crack the top five. Instead, the list has been completely replaced by tech companies, including Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Scale is in Style

Well, scale has always been in style, but now it is achievable in ways like never before. To reach more people, Walmart had to build more stores, expand complex supply chains, and hire new employees. This takes a lot of capital and manpower, and the stakes are high for each new expansion.

Amazon on the other hand, can bring in more revenues with less of the work or risk involved. Scale allows tech companies to get bigger without getting bogged down by many of the problems that companies with millions of employees can run into.

The world’s best tech companies are also able to gain competitive advantages that are extremely difficult to supplant. While oil companies are fighting over a limited supply and have a commoditized end product, Google and Facebook have key businesses that are truly unique and the best at what they do.

For these reasons, tech is likely to top the leaderboard for the largest companies by market cap for the foreseeable future.

Related Topics:apple stocks market cap largest companies exxon

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Technology

Visualizing the Top U.S. States for AI Jobs

Nearly 800,000 AI jobs were posted in the U.S. throughout 2022. View this graphic to see a breakdown by state.

Published

3 days ago

May 26, 2023

Marcus Lu

Visualizing the Top U.S. States for AI Jobs

Much ink has been spilled over fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate jobs in the economy. While some of those fears may be well-founded, red-hot interest in AI innovation is creating new jobs as well.

This graphic visualizes data from Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, which shows how many AI-related jobs were posted in each state throughout 2022.

In total there were 795,624 AI jobs posted throughout the year, of which 469,925 (59%) were in the top 10. The full tally is included in the table below.

Rank	State	Number of job postings	% of total
1	California	142,154	17.9%
2	Texas	66,624	8.4%
3	New York	43,899	5.5%
4	Massachusetts	34,603	4.3%
5	Virginia	34,221	4.3%
6	Florida	33,585	4.2%
7	Illinois	31,569	4.0%
8	Washington	31,284	3.9%
9	Georgia	26,620	3.3%
10	Michigan	25,366	3.2%
11	North Carolina	23,854	3.0%
12	New Jersey	23,447	2.9%
13	Colorado	20,421	2.6%
14	Pennsylvania	20,397	2.6%
15	Arizona	19,514	2.5%
16	Ohio	19,208	2.4%
17	Maryland	16,769	2.1%
18	Minnesota	11,808	1.5%
19	Tennessee	11,173	1.4%
20	Missouri	10,990	1.4%
21	Oregon	10,811	1.4%
22	Washington, D.C.	9,606	1.2%
23	Indiana	9,247	1.2%
24	Connecticut	8,960	1.1%
25	Wisconsin	8,879	1.1%
26	Alabama	7,866	1.0%
27	Kansas	7,683	1.0%
28	Arkansas	7,247	0.9%
29	Utah	6,885	0.9%
30	Nevada	6,813	0.9%
31	Idaho	6,109	0.8%
32	Oklahoma	5,719	0.7%
33	Iowa	5,670	0.7%
34	South Carolina	4,928	0.6%
35	Louisiana	4,806	0.6%
36	Kentucky	4,536	0.6%
37	Nebraska	4,032	0.5%
38	Delaware	3,503	0.4%
39	New Mexico	3,357	0.4%
40	Rhode Island	2,965	0.4%
41	New Hampshire	2,719	0.3%
42	Hawaii	2,550	0.3%
43	Mississippi	2,548	0.3%
44	Maine	2,227	0.3%
45	South Dakota	2,195	0.3%
46	Vermont	1,571	0.2%
47	North Dakota	1,227	0.2%
48	Alaska	970	0.1%
49	West Virginia	887	0.1%
50	Montana	833	0.1%
51	Wyoming	769	0.1%

The following chart adds some context to these numbers. It shows how the percentage of AI job postings in some of the top states has changed since 2010.

We can see that California quickly became the primary destination for AI jobs in the early 2010s, presumably as Silicon Valley companies began developing the technology.

California’s share has since declined, with a significant number of jobs seemingly moving to Texas. In fact, many tech companies are relocating to Texas to avoid California’s relatively higher taxes and cost of living.

The 10 Most In-Demand Specialized Skills

Lightcast also captured the top 10 specialized skills that were required for AI-related jobs. These are listed in the table below.

Skill	Frequency (number of postings)	Frequency (% of postings)
Python	296,662	37%
Computer Science	260,333	33%
SQL	185,807	23%
Data Analysis	159,801	20%
Data Science	157,855	20%
Amazon Web Services	155,615	19%
Agile Methodology	152,965	19%
Automation	138,791	17%
Java	133,856	17%
Software Engineering	133,286	17%