Apple becomes the first US company to reach a $2T market cap during intraday trading, two years after reaching $1T
Just two years after becoming the first U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization, Apple has officially doubled its value to $2 trillion.
VentureBeatJeremy Horwitz
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's milestone run has been accelerating: it first touched $1 trillion intraday in August 2018 at $207 before holding the level, then went from a $1.5T market cap in June 2020 to $2 trillion barely two months later. The first trillion took two years; the most recent half-trillion took weeks.
Apple becomes the first U.S. company at $2T, extending its run of being first to every trillion-dollar threshold and doubling its value in the two years since the $1T mark.
The $1.5T-to-$2T leg took roughly two months, making it the fastest half-trillion of Apple's milestone climb and signaling momentum, not a plateau.
Second-order effects
Each Apple threshold resets the scoreboard for U.S. mega-caps, turning round-number market caps into a recurring public benchmark other large companies are measured against.
The cadence — $1T in 2018, $1.5T in June 2020, $2T by August — invites markets to price Apple's next rung rather than treat any single milestone as a peak.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, trillion-dollar thresholds become routine checkpoints rather than historic anomalies, with Apple defining each rung first and market-cap concentration in a single U.S. company becoming a structural feature of the market.
The trend: U.S. mega-cap valuations are compounding fast enough that trillion-dollar market caps are becoming recurring checkpoints, with Apple crossing each one first.
And remember: Apple hasn't done much new! It's just built one of history's best moneymakers, which no longer needs groundbreaking innovations to keep the business humming. And in some ways, the pandemic has been pretty good for business. Here are Apple's execs on the moment: http…
Apple just became the first U.S. company to hit a $2 trillion valuation. What's most stunning: Apple added $1 trillion in value over the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever before in the coronavirus pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Apple, after first 42 years in business: Market value reaches staggering $1 trillion. Apple, in *just the past 21 weeks*: Market value DOUBLES to $2 trillion. https://www.nytimes.com/...
The “conventional wisdom” on Apple for the past decade is that they needed to enter completely new markets to grow. As the world's first $2T company, it turns out continuing to build better and better products and services works just fine.
Apple hitting $1 trillion was a story of a once-doomed company and a stunning turnaround. Apple hitting $2 trillion feels like a story of a crazy stock market that rewards a handful of tech giants for owning everything
It's only two years since Apple became the first trillion dollar company. from March's lows, it's basically doubled, adding ANOTHER trillion in six months.
All of Apple's second $1 trillion came in the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever before in the coronavirus pandemic. @jacknicas https://www.nytimes.com/...
Five companies constitute 20% of the stock market's worth, run the operating systems on 99% of devices, & deliver to Americans the majority of their news, books & info. Surely we can now all agree that self-regulation of digital markets doesn't work? https://www.nytimes.com/...
I'm reminded of the Democratic-aligned economists and policy “experts” who pooh-poohed the idea of a pandemic merger moratorium on the grounds that it was over-broad and economically “naive.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Apple's stock market value is “double what it was just 21 weeks ago. The tech companies' dominance of the stock market is propelled by their unprecedented reach into our lives, shaping how we work, communicate, shop and relax” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft account for 20 percent of the stock market's total worth, a level not seen from a single industry in at least 70 years https://www.nytimes.com/...