The size of a company on the stock market is generally measured by its market capitalization, which is calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the current share price. When investors talk about the most significant publicly traded companies, they often refer to size in terms of market capitalization rather than number of employees or gross profit.
While no single commercial sector dominates the top 10 list, over half of these companies are related to the technology industry. This highlights that the technology sector is one of the largest contributors to the market, especially for people interested in investing in AI-related companies. Just as employee numbers and profit and loss statements provide context, market value gives an idea of which companies have the greatest impact on the economic climate based on the stocks’ overall valuation. The exponential growth of tech giants over the past decade highlights how groundbreaking inventions can transform a company from a promising startup to a global powerhouse in a relatively short period of time.
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List of the 10 largest companies in the world by market capitalization 2024
While Apple took the top spot with a market cap of $2.75 trillion in May 2023, the rest of the spots in the top 5 were taken up by some of the world’s most recognizable brands. Microsoft, Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco), Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Amazon rounded out the top 5 companies by market cap. Notably, Saudi Aramco topped the rankings of the world’s most profitable companies in 2022, boasting pretax profits of over $300 billion. The full list of the world’s 10 largest companies by market cap is below:
| Rank | name | Market capitalization | Price | Today | country |
| 1 | Apple | $3,434K | $225.89 | 0.07% | USA |
| 2 | NVIDIA | $3,197T | 130.00 USD | 4.35% | USA |
| 3 | Microsoft | $3,133K | $421.53 | 0.73% | USA |
| 4 | alphabet | $2,061T | $168.40 | 2.22% | USA |
| 5 | Amazon | $1,870T | $178.22 | 0.66% | USA |
| 6 | Saudi Aramco | $1,828K | $7.56 | 0.18% | South Arabia |
| 7 | Meta-platforms | $1,338T | $529.28 | 0.35% | USA |
| 8 | Berkshire-Hathaway | $967.00B | $448.77 | 0.96% | USA |
| 9 | TSMC | $909.89B | $175.45 | 0.52% | Taiwan |
| 10 | Eli Lilly | $830.02 billion | $921.81 | 0.03% | USA |
Ranked 6th on the list of top companies by market capitalization, Nvidia has attracted significant attention due to its remarkable profitability in the last quarter of 2023. The company is known for its expertise in manufacturing standalone GPUs (graphics processing units). Notably, Nvidia’s GPUs play a crucial role in powering generative AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Nvidia’s huge popularity is due to its leadership position in the GPU market and its remarkable financial performance compared to many industry competitors.
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Largest companies in the world by market capitalization 2024
1.Apple
Market capitalization: 3.37 trillion US dollars
headquarters: Cupertino, California
Founded: 1976
sector: Technology
Corporate focus: Software and hardware
Apple made history in June 2023 when it became the first publicly traded company to reach a market capitalization of $3 trillion, demonstrating the consumer electronics giant’s immense influence and success on a global scale. While Apple’s market value saw a slight decline in the first few months of 2024, it reclaimed the title of the world’s most valuable company from Microsoft on June 12 after unveiling revolutionary new initiatives in artificial intelligence that would change the way people interact with technology. Their groundbreaking “Apple Intelligence” platform brings together conversational ML technology similar to ChatGPT with the immensely popular digital assistants Siri and Apple’s Writing Tools, representing a giant leap forward that could fundamentally change the way people interact with AI. With its ambitious foray into artificial intelligence, demonstrating an unwavering commitment to staying at the forefront of innovation, Apple cemented its status as a preeminent name in both consumer electronics and advanced AI research and development based on market capitalization.
2. NVIDIA (NVDA)
Market capitalization: 2.64 trillion US dollars
headquarters: Santa Clarita, California
Founded: 1993
sector: Technology
Corporate focus: PC hardware and AI
NVIDIA is a Silicon Valley company primarily focused on developing graphics processing units for visual computing and AI. While GPUs remain central to video games and professional design, NVIDIA’s innovations in deep learning hardware and software have driven recent advances in artificial intelligence. By housing thousands of tensor cores in each chip, NVIDIA GPUs are well-suited to the complex numerical calculations required for neural networks, catapulting the company into the top tier of corporate America by market capitalization. NVIDIA currently holds over 90% market share in the semiconductor space for AI workloads and has found itself at the core of the features of ChatGPT and other widely used large language models. Most recently, NVIDIA AI, in collaboration with Meta, launched the Llama programming framework to simplify the development of customized AI services for large enterprises, underscoring NVIDIA’s leadership in bringing general artificial intelligence to enterprises worldwide.
Note: The list will be updated as soon as the latest data is available. The list is based on a report by companiesmarketcap entitled “Largest Companies by Market Capitalization”.
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