- American companies account for more than 50% of the market cap of the world's top companies.
- For the third year in a row, Apple retained its position as the most capped business globally.
American firms collectively hold the largest market capitalization of the top 6000 companies. According to a BanklessTimes.com analysis, U.S. companies control over 50% of leading global firms’ $92.5T cap. That works out to a value of more than $46T.
That dominance comes into sharp focus when considering the top ten global firms by the metric. U.S. firms take eight out of the ten slots. They jointly contribute $11.928T of the $14.7T that the ten account for.
World’s most capped business
Of these ten, five firms have caps of at least a trillion USD. On the other hand, the remaining five have caps of between $548 – $795 billion. Apple leads two other firms, Microsoft and Saudi Aramco, that have valuations of at least $2T.
The technology giant is the world’s most capped business for the third consecutive year. At the time of writing, it had a capitalization of $2.845T. That’s about half a trillion more than second-placed company Microsoft.
Apple’s knack for firsts
In 2018, Apple became the first company to surpass the $1T market cap. Since then, it has gone on to more than double its value in the last two years. Most of that growth occurred at the height of the global COVID-19 crisis implying the importance of tech in our lives.
Early this year, Apple’s cap hit the $3T mark briefly. But it couldn’t sustain that for long. Its cap fell to $2.99T before stabilizing around the current figure.
Currently, it makes up about 10% of the $20.94T U.S GDP. That valuation puts it in the company of China, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, and India. Besides the U.S, these are the only nations with GDPs exceeding $2T.
Microsoft leads onslaught on Apple’s dominance
Leading software manufacturer Microsoft just about pipped Saudi Arabia’s Aramco to the second spot. The former’s market capitalization stood at $2.310 trillion at press time. It owes its growing profitability to increasing revenues from Azure, its cloud computing services platform.
Saudi Arabia’s oil and natural gas company Aramco comes in at number three. The only non-American company besides Taiwan’s TSMC in the top ten, Aramco’s market cap was $2.240T. Meanwhile, TSMC capped the ten leading global firms with a valuation of $548B.
The other American firms that made it to the top 10 are Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, Nvidia, and Meta. Google’s parent company Alphabet occupied the fourth slot with a capitalization of $1.87T.
Amazon and Tesla followed in the fifth and sixth positions. Whereas the online retailer’s market value was nearly $1.7T, the E.V. maker’s was $1.1T. The remaining companies registered caps of less than $795B.
