Infographic: How Many Millions of Lines of Code Does It Take?
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How Many Millions of Lines of Code Does It Take?

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How Many Millions of Lines of Code Does It Take?

How Many Millions of Lines of Code Does It Take?

Today’s data visualization comes from David McCandless from Information is Beautiful. Buy their awesome book called Knowledge is Beautiful – we own the physical version, and it’s full of great data visualizations.

How many millions of lines of code does it take to make the modern program, web service, car, or airplane possible?

The range is extraordinary: the average iPhone app has less than 50,000 lines of code, while Google’s entire code base is two billion lines for all services. And interestingly, the code behind machines such as fighter jets, popular video game engines, and even the Large Hadron Collider fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

Increasing Complexity

A million lines of code, if printed, would be about 18,000 pages of text. That’s 14x the length of War and Peace.

It’s more than what was needed to run old technologies like the Space Shuttle, a pacemaker, or even the game engine of Quake 3 – but it’s not enough to be the driving force behind the modern software that’s used in everyday life today.

  • The control software to run a U.S. military drone uses 3.5 million lines of code.
  • A Boeing 787 has 6.5 million lines behind its avionics and online support systems.
  • Google Chrome (browser) runs on 6.7 million lines of code (upper estimate).
  • A Chevy Volt uses 10 million lines.
  • The Android operating system runs on 12-15 million lines.
  • The Large Hadron Collider uses 50 million lines.
  • Not including backend code, Facebook runs on 62 million lines of code.
  • With the advent of sophisticated, cloud-connected infotainment systems, the car software in a modern vehicle apparently uses 100 million lines of code. This is according to Wired magazine.
  • All Google services combine for a whopping 2 billion lines.

Applying the math above – that means it would take 36,000,000 pages to “print out” all of the code behind all Google services. That would be a stack of paper 2.2 mi (3.6 km) high!

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Apple’s Colossal Market Cap as it Hits $3 Trillion

Apple’s market cap recently hit $3 trillion. To put that scale into context, this visualization compares Apple to European indexes.
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6 days ago

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January 10, 2022

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Apple’s Colossal Market Cap in Context

In January of 2019, Apple’s market capitalization stood at $700 billion.

While this was perceived as a colossal figure at the time, when we fast forward to today, that valuation seems a lot more modest. Since then, Apple has surged to touch a $3 trillion valuation on January 3rd, 2022.

To gauge just how monstrous of a figure this is, consider that Apple is no longer comparable to just companies, but to countries and even entire stock indexes. This animation from James Eagle ranks the growth in Apple’s market cap alongside top indexes from the UK, France, and Germany.

Let’s take a closer look.

Apple Takes On Europe

The three indexes Apple is compared to are heavyweights in their own right.

The FTSE 100 consists of giants like HSBC and vaccine producer AstraZeneca, while the CAC 40 Index is home to LVMH, which made Bernard Arnault the richest man in the world for a period of time last year.

Nonetheless, Apple’s market cap exceeds that of the 100 companies in the FTSE, as well as the 40 in each of the CAC and DAX indexes.

Stock/IndexMarket Cap ($T)Country of Origin
Apple$3.00T🇺🇸
FTSE 100$2.90T🇬🇧
CAC 40 Index$2.76T🇫🇷
DAX 40 (Dax 30) Index*$2.50T🇩🇪

*Germany’s flagship DAX Index expanded from 30 to 40 constituents in September 2021.

It’s important to note, that while Apple’s growth is stellar, European companies have simultaneously seen a decline in their share of the overall global stock market, which helps make these comparisons even more eye-catching.

For example, before 2005, publicly-traded European companies represented almost 30% of global stock market capitalization, but those figures have been cut in half to just 15% today.

Here are some other approaches to measure Apple’s dominance.

Apple’s Revenue Per Minute vs Other Tech Giants

Stepping away from market capitalization, another unique way to measure Apple’s success is in how much sales they generate on a per minute basis. In doing so, we see that they generate a massive $848,090 per minute.

Here’s how Apple revenue per minute compares to other Big Tech giants:

CompanyRevenue Per Minute
Amazon$955,517
Apple$848,090
Alphabet (Google)$433,014
Microsoft$327,823
Facebook$213,628
Tesla$81,766
Netflix$50,566

Furthermore, Apple’s profits aren’t too shabby either: their $20.5 billion in net income last quarter equates to $156,000 in profits per minute.

How Apple Compares To Countries

Lastly, we can compare Apple’s market cap to the GDP of countries.

Country (excluding Apple)Total Value ($T)
Apple$3.0T
Italy$2.0T
Brazil$1.8T
Canada$1.7T
Russia$1.7T
South Korea$1.6T
Australia$1.4T
Spain$1.4T
Mexico$1.3T
Indonesia$1.1T

What might be most impressive here is that Apple’s market cap eclipses the GDP of major developed economies, such as Canada and Australia. That means the company is more valuable than the entire economic production of these countries in a calendar year.

That’s some serious scale.

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Companies Gone Public in 2021: Visualizing IPO Valuations

Tracking the companies that have gone public in 2021, their valuation, and how they did it.

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January 7, 2022

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Companies Gone Public in 2021: Visualizing Valuations

Despite its many tumultuous turns, last year was a productive year for global markets, and companies going public in 2021 benefited.

From much-hyped tech initial public offerings (IPOs) to food and healthcare services, many companies with already large followings have gone public this year. Some were supposed to go public in 2020 but got delayed due to the pandemic, and others saw the opportunity to take advantage of a strong current market.

This graphic measures 68 companies that have gone public in 2021 — including IPOs, SPACs, and Direct Listings—as well as their subsequent valuations after listing.

Who’s Gone Public in 2021?

Historically, companies that wanted to go public employed one main method above others: the initial public offering (IPO).

But companies going public today readily choose from one of three different options, depending on market situations, associated costs, and shareholder preference:

  • Initial Public Offering (IPO): A private company creates new shares which are underwritten by a financial organization and sold to the public.
  • Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC): A separate company with no operations is created strictly to raise capital to acquire the company going public. SPACs are the fastest method of going public, and have become popular in recent years.
  • Direct Listing: A private company enters a market with only existing, outstanding shares being traded and no new shares created. The cost is lower than that of an IPO, since no fees need to be paid for underwriting.

The majority of companies going public in 2021 chose the IPO route, but some of the biggest valuations resulted from direct listings.

Listing DateCompanyValuation ($B)Listing Type
08-Jan-21Clover Health$7.0SPAC
13-Jan-21Affirm$11.9IPO
13-Jan-21Billtrust$1.3SPAC
14-Jan-21Poshmark$3.0IPO
15-Jan-21Playtika$11.0IPO
21-Jan-21Hims and Hers Health$1.6SPAC
28-Jan-21Qualtrics$15.0IPO
09-Feb-21Metromile-SPAC
11-Feb-21Bumble$8.2IPO
26-Feb-21ChargePoint Holdings-SPAC
03-Mar-21Oscar Health$7.9IPO
10-Mar-21Roblox$30.0Direct Listing
11-Mar-21Coupang$60.0IPO
23-Mar-21DigitalOcean$5.0IPO
25-Mar-21VIZIO$3.9IPO
26-Mar-21ThredUp$1.3IPO
31-Mar-21Coursera$4.3IPO
01-Apr-21Compass$8.0IPO
14-Apr-21Coinbase$86.0Direct Listing
15-Apr-21AppLovin$28.6IPO
21-Apr-21UiPath$35.0IPO
21-Apr-21DoubleVerify$4.2IPO
05-May-21The Honest Company$1.4IPO
07-May-21Lightning eMotors$0.82SPAC
07-May-21Blade Air Mobility$0.83SPAC
19-May-21Squarespace$7.4Direct Listing
19-May-21Procore$9.6IPO
19-May-21Oatly$10.0IPO
26-May-21ZipRecruiter$2.4Direct Listing
26-May-21FIGS$4.4IPO
01-Jun-21SoFi$8.7SPAC
02-Jun-21BarkBox$1.6SPAC
08-Jun-21Marqueta$15.0IPO
10-Jun-21Monday.com$7.5IPO
16-Jun-21WalkMe$2.5IPO
22-Jun-21Sprinklr$3.7IPO
24-Jun-21Confluent$9.1IPO
29-Jun-21Clear$4.5IPO
30-Jun-21SentinelOne$10.0IPO
30-Jun-21LegalZoom$7.0IPO
30-Jun-21Didi Chuxing$73.0IPO
16-Jul-21Blend$4IPO
21-Jul-21Kaltura$1.24IPO
21-Jul-21DISCO$2.5IPO
21-Jul-21Couchbase$1.4IPO
23-Jul-21Vtex$3.5IPO
23-Jul-21Outbrain$1.1IPO
28-Jul-21Duolingo$3.7IPO
28-Jul-21Riskified$3.3IPO
29-Jul-21Robinhood$32.0IPO
22-Sep-21Toast$22.0IPO
22-Sep-21Freshworks$10.1IPO
23-Sep-21Remitly$6.9IPO
28-Sep-21Amplitude$6.4Direct Listing
29-Sep-21Warby Parker$6.0Direct Listing
14-Oct-21GitLab$11.0IPO
27-Oct-21Rent the Runway$1.7IPO
29-Oct-21Udemy$4.0IPO
03-Nov-21Allbirds$2.2IPO
04-Nov-21NerdWallet$1.2IPO
10-Nov-21Rivian$66.5IPO
10-Nov-21Expensify$2.2IPO
11-Nov-21Winc-IPO
11-Nov-21Weave-IPO
17-Nov-21UserTesting-IPO
17-Nov-21Braze$6.0IPO
18-Nov-21Sweetgreen$3.0IPO
09-Dec-21Nubank$41.0IPO

Though there are many well-known names in the list, one of the biggest through lines continues to be the importance of tech.

A majority of 2021’s newly public companies have been in tech, including multiple mobile apps, websites, and online services. The two biggest IPOs so far were South Korea’s Coupang, an online marketplace valued at $60 billion after going public, and China’s ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing, the year’s largest post-IPO valuation at $73 billion.

And there were many apps and services going public through other means as well. Gaming company Roblox went public through a direct listing, earning a valuation of $30 billion, and cryptocurrency platform Coinbase has earned the year’s largest valuation so far, with an $86 billion valuation following its direct listing.

Big Companies Going Public in 2022

As with every year, some of the biggest companies going public were lined up for the later half.

Tech will continue to be the talk of the markets. Payment processing firm Stripe was setting up to be the year’s biggest IPO with an estimated valuation of $95 billion, but got delayed. Likewise, online grocery delivery platform InstaCart, which saw a big upswing in traction due to the pandemic, has been looking to go public at a valuation of at least $39 billion.

Of course, it’s common that potential public listings and offerings fall through. Whether they get delayed due to weak market conditions or cancelled at the last minute, anything can happen when it comes to public markets.

This post has been updated as of January 1, 2022.

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