Technology
Which Companies Belong to the Elite Trillion-Dollar Club?
Which Companies Belong to the Elite Trillion-Dollar Club?
Just a handful of publicly-traded companies have managed to achieve $1 trillion or more in market capitalization—only seven, to be precise.
We pull data from Companies Market Cap to find out which familiar names are breaking the 13-digit barrier—and who else is waiting in the wings.
The Major Players in the Game
Apple, Microsoft, and Saudi Aramco are the three companies to have shattered the $2T market cap milestone to date, leaving others in the dust. Apple was also the first among its Big Tech peers to ascend to the $1 trillion landmark back in 2018.
Company | Valuation | Country | Age of company |
---|---|---|---|
Apple | $2.46T | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 45 years (Founded 1976) |
Microsoft | $2.31T | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 46 years (Founded 1975) |
Saudi Aramco | $2.00T | 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | 88 years (Founded 1933) |
Alphabet (Google) | $1.84T | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 23 years (Founded 1998) |
Amazon | $1.68T | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 27 years (Founded 1994) |
Tesla | $1.01T | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 18 years (Founded 2003) |
Footnote: Data is current as of October 25, 2021. Facebook is the 7th company historically to reach $1 trillion, but dipped out recently.
The largest oil and gas giant—Saudi Aramco is the only non-American company to make the trillion-dollar club. This makes it a notable outlier, as American companies typically dominate the leaderboard of the biggest corporations around the world.
Tesla Reaches $1 Trillion
Tesla reached the $1 trillion market cap for the first time due to a strong trading day on Monday October 25th. Their shares popped some 10%, off the announcement of some positive news from Hertz and Morgan Stanley.
First, Hertz, a car rental company, revealed an order for 100,000 Tesla vehicles — the largest order in the automaker’s history. Second, an auto analyst at Morgan Stanley made revisions and raised his price target on Tesla to $1,200.
Whether Tesla can stay a trillion dollar company will likely be a much discussed topic after today, as their valuation has always been a controversial one. Bearish investors frequently point to Tesla’s lack of fundamentals relative to traditional car companies. For instance, their market cap relative to cars sold:
Company | Market Cap ($B) | Cars Sold (2020) | Value Per Car Sold | If Valued Like Tesla |
---|---|---|---|---|
Tesla | $1,000 | 500,000 | $2 million | $1.0 Trillion |
Volkswagen | $148 | 9.3 million | $15,000 | $18.6 trillion |
Toyota | $242 | 9.5 million | $25,000 | $19.0 trillion |
Ford | $62 | 4.2 million | $14,000 | $8.4 trillion |
Based on the 500,000 cars Tesla sold in 2020, their $1 trillion market cap values them at $2 million per car sold. As an extreme example, if Volkswagen and Toyota were to be valued in a similar fashion, their market caps would be close to $19 trillion each. Larger than all of the elite trillion-dollar club combined.
Who Else Might Join the Trillion-Dollar Club?
Companies with a market capitalization above $500 billion are also few and far between. After Facebook, which until recently was part of the elite trillion-dollar club, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway is the closest to joining the Four Comma Club. Though there’s still some ways to go, their market cap of $656 billion means shares would need to appreciate some 52%.
Company | Valuation | Country | Age of company |
---|---|---|---|
$926B | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 17 years (Founded 2004) | |
Berkshire Hathaway | $656B | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 182 years (Founded 1839) |
TSMC | $619B | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 34 years (Founded 1987) |
Tencent | $589B | 🇨🇳 China | 23 years (Founded 1998) |
Visa | $497B | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 63 years (Founded 1958) |
Visa, one of the pioneers of consumer credit in the United States, continues to innovate even 63 years after its founding. In attempts to expand the reach of its already massive payments ecosystem, Visa is experimenting with acquisitions, and even dipping its toes into cryptocurrency with some success.
Whether the next company to join the trillion-dollar club comes from the U.S., from the tech industry, or out of left field, it’s clear that it has some pretty big shoes to fill.
Brands
How Tech Logos Have Evolved Over Time
From complete overhauls to more subtle tweaks, these tech logos have had quite a journey. Featuring: Google, Apple, and more.
How Tech Logos Have Evolved Over Time
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.
One would be hard-pressed to find a company that has never changed its logo. Granted, some brands—like Rolex, IBM, and Coca-Cola—tend to just have more minimalistic updates. But other companies undergo an entire identity change, thus necessitating a full overhaul.
In this graphic, we visualized the evolution of prominent tech companies’ logos over time. All of these brands ranked highly in a Q1 2024 YouGov study of America’s most famous tech brands. The logo changes are sourced from 1000logos.net.
How Many Times Has Google Changed Its Logo?
Google and Facebook share a 98% fame rating according to YouGov. But while Facebook’s rise was captured in The Social Network (2010), Google’s history tends to be a little less lionized in popular culture.
For example, Google was initially called “Backrub” because it analyzed “back links” to understand how important a website was. Since its founding, Google has undergone eight logo changes, finally settling on its current one in 2015.
Company | Number of Logo Changes |
---|---|
8 | |
HP | 8 |
Amazon | 6 |
Microsoft | 6 |
Samsung | 6 |
Apple | 5* |
Note: *Includes color changes. Source: 1000Logos.net
Another fun origin story is Microsoft, which started off as Traf-O-Data, a traffic counter reading company that generated reports for traffic engineers. By 1975, the company was renamed. But it wasn’t until 2012 that Microsoft put the iconic Windows logo—still the most popular desktop operating system—alongside its name.
And then there’s Samsung, which started as a grocery trading store in 1938. Its pivot to electronics started in the 1970s with black and white television sets. For 55 years, the company kept some form of stars from its first logo, until 1993, when the iconic encircled blue Samsung logo debuted.
Finally, Apple’s first logo in 1976 featured Isaac Newton reading under a tree—moments before an apple fell on his head. Two years later, the iconic bitten apple logo would be designed at Steve Jobs’ behest, and it would take another two decades for it to go monochrome.
-
Green1 week ago
Ranked: The Countries With the Most Air Pollution in 2023
-
Automotive2 weeks ago
Almost Every EV Stock is Down After Q1 2024
-
AI2 weeks ago
The Stock Performance of U.S. Chipmakers So Far in 2024
-
Markets2 weeks ago
Charted: Big Four Market Share by S&P 500 Audits
-
Real Estate2 weeks ago
Ranked: The Most Valuable Housing Markets in America
-
Money2 weeks ago
Which States Have the Highest Minimum Wage in America?
-
AI2 weeks ago
Ranked: Semiconductor Companies by Industry Revenue Share
-
Travel2 weeks ago
Ranked: The World’s Top Flight Routes, by Revenue