With a market capitalization of 3.12 trillion U.S. dollars as of May 2024, Microsoft was the world’s largest company that year. Rounding out the top five were some of the world’s most recognizable brands: Apple, NVIDIA, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Amazon. Saudi Aramco led the ranking of the world's most profitable companies in 2023, with a pre-tax income of nearly 250 billion U.S. dollars. How are market value and market capitalization determined? Market value and market capitalization are two terms frequently used – and confused - when discussing the profitability and viability of companies. Strictly speaking, market capitalization (or market cap) is the worth of a company based on the total value of all their shares; an important metric when determining the comparative value of companies for trading opportunities. Accordingly, many stock exchanges such as the New York or London Stock Exchange release market capitalization data on their listed companies. On the other hand, market value technically refers to what a company is worth in a much broader context. It is determined by multiple factors, including profitability, corporate debt, and the market environment as a whole. In this sense it aims to estimate the overall value of a company, with share price only being one element. Market value is therefore useful for determining whether a company’s shares are over- or undervalued, and in arriving at a price if the company is to be sold. Such valuations are generally made on a case-by-case basis though, and not regularly reported. For this reason, market capitalization is often reported as market value. What are the top companies in the world? The answer to this question depends on the metric used. Although the largest company by market capitalization, Microsoft's global revenue did not manage to crack the top 20 companies. Rather, American multinational retailer Walmart was ranked as the largest company in the world by revenue. Walmart also had the highest number of employees in the world.

In 2009, Ecxxon Mobil Corp had a market capitalization of approximately ****** billion U.S dollars, making it the largest company in the world at the time. Five of the ten largest companies worldwide in 2009 were based in the United States, with three from Europe and two from China.

In 1989, the Industrial Bank of Japan had a market capitalization of approximately ****** billion U.S dollars, making it the largest company in the world at the time. Six of the ten largest companies worldwide in 1989 were based in Japan while the remaining four were American, highlighting the economic dominance of these two countries in the late *****.

Graph and download economic data for Market Capitalization Outside of Top 10 Largest Companies to Total Market Capitalization for Spain (DDAM02ESA156NWDB) from 1998 to 2020 about market cap, Spain, companies, and stock market.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the largest stock exchange in the world, with an equity market capitalization of almost ** trillion U.S. dollars as of June 2025. The following three exchanges were the NASDAQ, PINK Exchange, and the Frankfurt Exchange. What is a stock exchange? A stock exchange is a marketplace where stockbrokers, traders, buyers, and sellers can trade in equities products. The largest exchanges have thousands of listed companies. These companies sell shares of their business, giving the general public the opportunity to invest in them. The oldest stock exchange worldwide is the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, founded in the late sixteenth century. Other functions of a stock exchange Since these are publicly traded companies, every firm listed on a stock exchange has had an initial public offering (IPO). The largest IPOs can raise billions of dollars in equity for the firm involved. Related to stock exchanges are derivatives exchanges, where stock options, futures contracts, and other derivatives can be traded.

As of July 16, 2025, Nvidia was the leading tech company by market capitalization globally at 4.16 trillion U.S. dollars. Nvidia became the first company to ever achieve the four trillion milestone, hitting this figure for the first time in July 2025. Microsoft ranked second at 3.76 trillion U.S. dollars. Nvidia's immense growth With a focus that began with origins in gaming, Nvidia's business strategy has been transformed by demand from data centers that sit at the heart of the AI boom. The company's chips have been favored to support in the training and running of a range of large language models, most notably in the development of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Apple is also among the leaders Since its foundation in a Californian garage in 1976, Apple has expanded massively, becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world. The company started its origins in the PC industry with the Macintosh, but soon entered other segments of the consumer electronics market. Today, the iPhone is the most popular Apple product, although Mac, iPad, wearables, and services also contribute to its high revenues. Aiming at innovation, Apple invests every year in research and development, spanning a wide array of technologies from AI through to extended reality.

The value of global domestic equity market increased from ***** trillion U.S. dollars in 2013 to ****** trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. The United States was by far the leading country with the largest share of total world stocks as of 2024. Global market capitalization in different regions The market capitalization of domestic companies listed varied across different regions of the world. As of Decmber 2024, the Americas region had the largest domestic equity market, totaling ** trillion U.S. dollars. This region is home to the NYSE and Nasdaq, which are the two largest stock exchange operators in the world. The market capitalization of these two exchanges alone exceeded ** billion U.S. dollars as of January 2025, larger than the total market capitalization in the Asia-Pacific, and in the EMEA regions in the same period. Largest Stock Exchanges in Latin America As of December 2024, the B3 (Brasil Bolsa Balcao) was the biggest stock exchange in Latin America in terms of market capitalization and the second-largest in terms of number of listed companies. Following the B3 were the Mexican Stock Exchange and the Santiago Stock Exchange in Chile. The most valuable company in Latin America is listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange: Fomento Económico Mexicano, a multinational beverage and retail company headquartered in Monterrey, had a market cap of *** billion U.S. dollars as of March 2025.

The largest company in Switzerland, by market capitalization, as of October 10, 2024, was Nestlé, with a market capitalization amounting to approximately ****** billion U.S. dollars. Nestlé SA was founded in 1866 in Switzerland and is the largest food company in the world. The two pharmaceutical companies Roche and Novartis followed, with market capitalizations reaching ****** and ****** billion U.S. dollars, respectively.

Key information about United States Market Capitalization: % of GDP

• United States Market Capitalization accounted for 155.0 % of its Nominal GDP in Dec 2022, compared with a percentage of 205.0 % in the previous year
• US Market Capitalization: % Nominal GDP is updated yearly, available from Dec 1975 to Dec 2022
• The data reached an all-time high of 205.0 % in Dec 2021 and a record low of 36.7 % in Dec 1978

The World Bank provides annual Market Capitalization as % of Nominal GDP. Market Capitalization includes domestic companies listed at the end of the year and excludes investment companies, mutual funds and other collective investment vehicles

As of January 2025, Amazon's market capitalization surpassed 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars, making it the most valuable internet company by market capitalization worldwide. Second-ranked Alphabet had a market capitalization of approximately 2.2 trillion U.S. dollars. Social networking company Meta Platforms (née Facebook Inc.) ranked third. Facebook is the leading social network worldwide and has successfully taken advantage of the increasingly mobile online environment. Amazon's position in the market Amazon is one of the biggest internet companies worldwide by revenue. It generates profit from its position as the world's largest online retailer. In 2023, the company's net sales revenue amounted to 574.78 billion U.S. dollars. The e-commerce giant's net revenue, generated through online stores, was 231.87 billion U.S. dollars. Google and its most profitable services Google, with the parent company Alphabet inc, generates its revenue mainly from advertising. The company uses its advertisement services, such as Google AdWords – which takes advantage of Google searches and appears as small advertisements next to search results – and Google AdSense, which generates advertisements based on a user's search history and location, among others. Advertisements based on AdSense appear across Google-owned sites, including YouTube and Google Finance. The online company also profits from the development of Android OS, licensing, and mobile apps. In 2024, Google’s total revenue amounted to 348.16 billion U.S. dollars.

As of May 2025, Amazon was the biggest internet company worldwide with a market cap of over ************ U.S. dollars Second-ranked Alphabet had a market capitalization of **** trillion U.S. dollars. The end of the 1990s in the United States saw the rise of a great number of internet companies, also called online companies or a variety of the name “dot com,” where the “.com” domain is derived from the word commercial. At the time, such startups were merely riding the wave of early internet business, but had little capital and perhaps one good idea. Few companies have survived the burst of the dot com bubble and even fewer have managed to become internationally successful. A few notable exceptions are American companies such as Google (founded in 1998), Amazon (founded in 1994) or eBay Inc. (founded in 1995), and the Chinese online giant Alibaba (founded in 1998), which have come to be some of the largest internet companies in the world. One of the largest internet companies worldwide is currently Alphabet, the parent company of Google, with a market capitalization of **** trillion U.S. dollars as of May 2025. Having started as a PhD project at Stanford University, the Google project slowly gained traction and is now the number one search engine in the world, with a market share of ** percent on the search engine market. Due to a number of high profile acquisitions, Google has expanded its portfolio beyond search, to include the video content sharing site YouTube, the digital app platform Google Play Store, the webmail service Gmail and the web browser Google Chrome, to only name a few. In October 2015, Google reorganized itself into a newly created parent company, the multinational conglomerate Alphabet Inc. The biggest internet companies in terms of their workforce are currently Amazon, Alphabet and Meta.

Market capitalization of listed domestic companies (current US$) in Iran was reported at 171583580000 USD in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Iran - Market capitalization of listed companies - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on August of 2025.

Key information about Ukraine Market Capitalization: % of GDP

• Ukraine Market Capitalization accounted for 3.4 % of its Nominal GDP in Dec 2018, compared with a percentage of 4.6 % in the previous year
• Ukraine Market Capitalization: % Nominal GDP is updated yearly, available from Dec 2010 to Dec 2018
• The data reached an all-time high of 27.5 % in Dec 2010 and a record low of 3.4 % in Dec 2018

The World Bank provides annual Market Capitalization as % of Nominal GDP. Market Capitalization includes domestic companies listed at the end of the year and excludes investment companies, mutual funds and other collective investment vehicles

Lebanon LB: Market Capitalization: Listed Domestic Companies data was reported at 11.492 USD bn in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 12.163 USD bn for 2016. Lebanon LB: Market Capitalization: Listed Domestic Companies data is updated yearly, averaging 8.596 USD bn from Dec 1996 (Median) to 2017, with 22 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 12.850 USD bn in 2009 and a record low of 1.228 USD bn in 2001. Lebanon LB: Market Capitalization: Listed Domestic Companies data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Lebanon – Table LB.World Bank.WDI: Financial Sector. Market capitalization (also known as market value) is the share price times the number of shares outstanding (including their several classes) for listed domestic companies. Investment funds, unit trusts, and companies whose only business goal is to hold shares of other listed companies are excluded. Data are end of year values converted to U.S. dollars using corresponding year-end foreign exchange rates.; ; World Federation of Exchanges database.; Sum; Stock market data were previously sourced from Standard & Poor's until they discontinued their 'Global Stock Markets Factbook' and database in April 2013. Time series have been replaced in December 2015 with data from the World Federation of Exchanges and may differ from the previous S&P definitions and methodology.

As of April 10, 2025, tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), and Amazon dominated the S&P 500 index and were among only eight companies with a market capitalization exceeding *** ******** U.S. dollars in the U.S.

******* was the leading company in Spain by market capitalization as of October 10, 2024. Their market cap amounted to approximately ****** billion U.S. dollars at that time. ******* was founded in 1985 and emerged as one of the biggest textile companies in the world. On the other hand, Iberdrola was the second largest company by market cap in the country, reaching ***** billion U.S. dollars.

As of December 31, 2024, the largest bank in the world in terms of market capitalization was the U.S.-based JPMorgan Chase. The American banking giant's market cap exceeded 678 billion U.S. dollars, which was significantly higher than Bank of America's, which ranked second with a market cap of approximately 340.21 billion U.S. dollars. JPMorgan Chase was also the largest bank in the United States in terms of total assets but ranked only fifth globally, behind four Chinese banks. What is market capitalization? Market capitalization, also known as stock market value, is the total value of issued shares of a publicly traded company. It is equal to the share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding. It applies only to publicly traded companies or companies that have made their stock market debut, also known as an initial public offering, or IPO. Due to the nature of the capitalist system and the practice of buying and selling stocks in public markets, market capitalization can be used as a proxy for the wider public’s opinion of a company’s net worth, making it therefore a determining factor in calculating other theoretical values of companies and their stocks, for example, stock valuation. How were banks affected by the coronavirus outbreak? The outbreak of the coronavirus left no industries unaffected and had a significant impact on the global financial markets. This can be seen in the banking industry, as the market capitalization of the largest banks worldwide dropped markedly between December 2019 and March 2020. For the largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, it was not until February 2021 that the market capitalization saw pre-pandemic figures again.

Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) was the leading company in France by market capitalization as of October 2024, with a valuation of approximately ***** billion U.S. dollars. Hermès and L'Oréal followed, with market capitalizations of ****** billion and ****** billion U.S. dollars, respectively. Luxury goods market in France France is globally renowned for its rich history and numerous high-end fashion brands in the luxury goods market. For example, Chanel was among the world’s most recognized luxury brands in 2022, among other French brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Hermes. Moreover, France ranks among the biggest five markets for luxury goods in the world, and the sector’s revenue in the country is expected to exceed ** billion U.S. dollars by 2025. LVMH: the world’s leading luxury company LVMH is a French luxury goods conglomerate operating across various sectors, including fashion and leather goods, perfumes and cosmetics, jewelry and watches, and wines and spirits. As the largest French company in the world, LVMH group's total revenue was over ** billion euros in 2023. Almost half of the revenue came from their business in the fashion and leather segment, which amounted to 42.16 billion euros in 2023.

Analysis of ‘Brazil Largest Companies’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/yamqwe/brazil-largest-companiese on 13 February 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

About this dataset

From the Forbes Global 2000 list​ last updated on May 2013. Forbes publishes an annual list of the world's 2000 largest publicly listed corporations. ​The Forbes Global 2000 weigh​s​ sales, profits, assets and market value​ equally​ so companies can be ranked by size. Figures for all companies are in US dollars.

​Source: Economy Watch

This dataset was created by Finance and contains around 0 samples along with Assets ($billion), Sales ($billion), technical information and other features such as: - Profits ($billion) - Market Value ($billion) - and more.

How to use this dataset

• Analyze Assets ($billion) in relation to Sales ($billion)
• Study the influence of Profits ($billion) on Market Value ($billion)
• More datasets

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit Finance

Start A New Notebook!

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Analysis of ‘China Largest Companies’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/yamqwe/china-largest-companiese on 28 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

About this dataset

From the Forbes Global 2000 list​ last updated on May 2013. Forbes publishes an annual list of the world's 2000 largest publicly listed corporations. ​The Forbes Global 2000 weigh​s​ sales, profits, assets and market value​ equally​ so companies can be ranked by size. Figures for all companies are in US dollars.

​Source: Economy Watch

This dataset was created by Finance and contains around 100 samples along with Profits ($billion), Market Value ($billion), technical information and other features such as: - Sales ($billion) - Assets ($billion) - and more.

How to use this dataset

• Analyze Global Rank in relation to Profits ($billion)
• Study the influence of Market Value ($billion) on Sales ($billion)
• More datasets

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit Finance

Start A New Notebook!

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---