Seems like 2022 isn’t just a happy new year after all, at least for folks counting currency back in Apple. The Cupertino-giant, which has already been the most valued corporation globally, just breached the $3 trillion market cap. Just to put that into context, if Apple does decide to turn into a nation state on its own (no more science fiction guys!), it would be more valuable than India — whose GDP is $2.8 Tn and is the world’s 5th largest.
However, considering how rapid Apple’s ascent to valuation figures has been, this was a milestone in making for quite some time. While there is still some conflict among data providers as to what the actual market cap, it is common consensus that Apple has in fact breached the $3Tn mark, becoming the first company in global corporate history to do so.
Apart from the astounding number, the figure also highlights how massive and arguably untouchable big tech companies have become. Take this. Nearly half a decade ago, the Big 5 of tech (Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Apple) had a combined market cap of $3Tn. Now Apple alone is worth that much, with others catching up but far behind by some distance. According to publicly available data, even today’s unicorns, with their valuations combined, are less valued than Apple. That is how astounding this is.
It is an understatement now that the wealth of these big tech companies is uncountable. And not that wealth creation is a bad thing, but this level of financial might simply makes it even more difficult to regulate big tech.
