In mid-January, Alphabet (the parent company of Google) became the newest company to join the “Trillion Dollar Club.” The companies in this exclusive group have three main features in common: their market caps have reached $1 trillion at some point, they are all based in the U.S., and they are all part of the technology sector. Our latest visualization sets out a side-by-side comparison of the four U.S. companies that belong to the Trillion Dollar Club, based on various financial metrics.

• Across the board, Apple has the highest market cap, revenue, profit, and profit per employee. It was also the first company in the world to reach a $1 trillion market cap.
• Amazon is included in the Trillion Dollar Club because its market cap reached $1 trillion in September 2018. The market cap currently sits at $925 billion.
• Despite having a market cap of almost $1 trillion and profits of $10,1 billion, Amazon’s profit per employee sits at only $15,557 due to its large, international workforce.
• Even though Amazon has the lowest market cap among the Trillion Dollar Club, it has the most expensive stock price of the group, at $1,864.72 per share as of January 21, 2020.

Market cap, or market capitalization, refers to the total value of a company's shares of stock that have been purchased by shareholders. Our data on the market cap and employees for each company comes from Yahoo Finance as of January 21, 2020. Information about the company’s profits and revenue comes from the Fortune 500 list as of 2019. Our visualization places the companies next to each other in order to compare financial metrics, including the market cap, number of employees, revenue, profit, and profit per employee. Each of these metrics is represented by a circle with the corresponding number listed inside. To get a high-level overview of how the companies compare to each other, the larger circles represent higher numbers and the smaller circles represent lower numbers.

Trillion Dollar Companies

1. Apple: $1.397 Market Cap
2. Microsoft: $1.275 Market Cap
3. Alphabet: $1.021 Market Cap
4. Amazon: $0.925 Market Cap

While the market cap numbers indicate that the Trillion Dollar Club is flourishing, the financial future of these Big Tech companies will be called into question as conversations around regulation become more important. Notably, Alphabet achieved its trillion-dollar milestone after France declared it will suspend its digital tax amid the threat of counter-tariffs of the U.S. In addition, Trump recently asked Apple to unlock iPhones for national security reasons, further inserting the government into the tech industry.

Interestingly, some of these companies themselves are looking for regulation of new technologies. More specifically, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has made calls for a joint U.S.-EU effort in order to regulate artificial intelligence. As technology--and regulation--continue to advance at a rapid rate, the effect on these companies’ bottom lines will become increasingly apparent.

Which companies do you think will be the next to join the Trillion Dollar Club? Let us know in the comments.