As Apple nears $3 trillion market cap let’s take a look at the top 5 most valuable companies in the world

Market Cap V GDP

Apple shares closed near an all-time high, putting the company within striking distance of achieving a historic $3 trillion valuation. Shares of the tech giant rose 0.35 percent to end the session at $183.95 on June 14, 2023, bringing its gain to 47 percent this year.

The new high comes less than a week after Apple unveiled new products, including its Vision Pro headset, with the hope of it becoming the next big hit. The release of the Vision Pro has already got people wondering what the world will look like with hordes of people wandering around wearing augmented-reality goggles.

Here’s a list of the top 5 most valuable companies in the world by market capitalization.

Top 5 companies by market capitalization

Apple ($2.89 trillion)

Apple Inc is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California. It is the world's largest technology company by revenue, with US$394.3 billion in 2022 revenue. As of March 2023, Apple is the world's biggest company by market capitalization. As of June 2022, it is the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales and the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.

Microsoft ($2.51 trillion)

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft's best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer along with the Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft is ranked No 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2022.

Saudi Aramco ($2.11 trillion)

Saudi Aramco, officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Group or simply Aramco, is a Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran. As of 2022, it is one of the largest companies in the world by revenue and has repeatedly achieved the largest annual profits in global corporate history. Saudi Aramco has both the world's second-largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than 270 billion barrels (43 billion cubic metres) and the largest daily oil production of all oil-producing companies.

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Alphabet (Google) ($1.573 trillion)

Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. Alphabet is the world's third-largest technology company by revenue and one of the world's most valuable companies. The company is led by Sundar Pichai as CEO.

Amazon ($1.30 trillion)             

Amazon.com, Inc. the fifth largest company in the world by market capitalization is an American online retailer with a wide range of products. According to its own information, Amazon, as the market leader in Internet trade, has the world's largest selection of books, CDs and videos. Private individuals or other companies can also offer new and used products as part of online trading via the integrated sales platform marketplace.

The Amazon Kindle is sold under its own brand as a reader for electronic books, the Amazon Fire HD tablet computer, the Fire TV set-top box, the Fire TV Stick HDMI stick and the Echo speech recognition system. With sales of $280 billion in 2019, a profit of $11.6 billion, and a market value of $1.32 trillion (June 2020), it was the third most valuable enterprise in the US after Apple and Microsoft, and before Google.

How big is Apple Inc actually?

The market capitalization figure of nearly $3 trillion of Apple Inc becomes even more interesting to observe when the same is compared with the nominal GDPs of the top five nations globally. Currently, the top five nations by GDP in nominal terms are the US ($25.4 trillion), China ($18.1 trillion), Japan ($4.23 trillion), Germany ($4.07 trillion) and India ($3.38 trillion).

Top 5 nations by GDP

Apple Inc hence is just a shade away to make it to the list of top five nations by GDP globally. Still, it is bigger in size than the GDP of nations like Brazil, Canada, Italy, Russia and South Korea among others.