NewsTechnology

Actions

Apple is leading the tech giants as it nears the $1 trillion mark

Posted at 1:27 PM, Feb 27, 2018
and last updated 2018-02-27 13:27:01-05

It's looking like at least one‚ — if not more — American tech giants may soon find themselves worth more than $1 trillion dollars. That's a lot of zeroes. A dozen in fact.

Apple is in the lead right now. Thanks to strong demand for its new iPhones, the company now has a market value of about $910 billion.

The stock only needs to go up another 10% for Apple to top $1 trillion.

But even if Apple gets to the trillion dollar mark first, it may soon have company. Apple rival Alphabet -- aka Google -- has a market cap just shy of $800 billion.

Amazon and Microsoft are also nipping at the heels of Apple and Google. Both of the Seattle-based tech titans are worth more than $730 billion.

And these two companies seem to have more momentum than Apple and Google, whose stocks are up about 6% this year.

In fact, GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a report Monday that he thinks Amazon could get to a trillion dollar valuation within 12 to 18 months.

Amazon's stock has soared 30% this year thanks to impressive growth in its core e-commerce business as well as gains from last year's acquisition of Whole Foods and strength in its AWS cloud division.

Microsoft has also benefited from growth in its cloud business. The stock is up 11% this year and is not far from a record high.

If the four biggest tech companies all hit the trillion dollar milestone relatively soon, they eventually may wind up being joined by a few other tech giants -- and a much older school conglomerate as well.

Facebook, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Chinese gaming and social networking kingpin Tencent are all worth about half a trillion dollars. So is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

There's also the possibility that none of these tech companies will be the first to top the magical trillion dollar level.

That's because oil giant Saudi Aramco is hoping to go public sometime this year -- and it is expected to be valued somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.