Our new visualization looks at the most valuable companies of all time, measured by their market capitalization.

• Twelve companies have reached a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion in today’s dollars.
• Six of the top 20 most valuable companies of all time were founded by countries other than the United States.
• The three largest companies were part of the shipping industry during the early colonial age. The next three largest are related to oil & petroleum. The tech industry rounds out the rest of the top ten largest companies of all time.
• While most of these companies are still in business in 2024, four of them (Standard Oil, South Sea Co, Mississippi Company, and Dutch East India Company) have already gone bust.

We gathered the market capitalization data for this visualization from Yahoo Finance as of September 17, 2024, with VOC, Mississippi, South Sea, and Standard Oil values from Fool.com, and Petro China’s from CNBC. All prices are expressed in USD. The companies in the visualization are listed in order from lowest market capitalization at the top to highest market capitalization at the bottom, with each company’s corresponding circle growing larger to reflect the size of its market cap. The years on the right indicate the date we referenced for the market capitalization data.

Top 10 Most Valuable Companies of All Time

1. Dutch East India Company: $8.28 trillion
2. Mississippi Company: $6.8 trillion
3. Saudi Aramco: $6.58 trillion
4. South Sea Company: $4.5 trillion
5. Apple: $3.29 trillion
6. Microsoft: $3.21 trillion
7. Nvidia: $2.86 trillion
8. Alphabet: $1.95 trillion
9. Amazon: $1.94 trillion
10. META (Facebook) $1.35 trillion

The Dutch East India Co. holds the distinction of being the first company to offer shares of its business to the public, effectively conducting the world's first initial public offering (IPO). Interestingly, the three shipping companies on this list--the Dutch East India Co., the Mississippi Co. and the South Sea Co.--had market caps more than twice as high as today’s biggest company, Saudi Aramco. These “joint-stock companies” that sought to capitalize on trade with the New World ultimately went bankrupt before 1800. However, the Dutch East India Co. in particular ushered in a new wave of economic growth and social change similar to how industry giants in the tech field are doing today.

Another company on this list that no longer exists is John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. The Standard Oil Company was dissolved on May 15, 1911 when the Supreme Court ruled that it was a monopoly and therefore violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. As legislators turn their attention to Big Tech and whether or not companies like Google and Amazon are also in violation of antitrust laws, it is interesting to ponder if history will repeat itself or what might turn out differently this time around.

Do you think more of these companies will reach market caps above $1 trillion? How do you think future legislation may impact some of these large tech and financial companies and their market caps? Please let us know in the comments.