The exclusive $3 trillion club
There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of a company reaching a market value of $3 trillion was the stuff of dreams.
The first company to do so was Tim Cook’s Apple, which then progressed very quickly from one trillion in August, 2018 to two trillion in August 2020, and then, in January 2022, three trillion. The company’s valuation has remained stable since then, while Satya Nadella’s Microsoft has grown in line with the spread of generative algorithms to overtake Apple on January 12, 2024.
Microsoft and Nadella’s case is especially interesting: Bill Gates drove an era of growth and increased the value of the company as the personal computer became ubiquitous; but his successor, Steve Ballmer, probably the worst CEO in history, nearly drove the company onto the rocks, missing one growth opportunity after another. It took Nadella to straighten out the company’s brand and put it back on the path to becoming a major player again, and eventually the most valuable company in the market.
More remarkable, arguably, is the case of Nvidia: after many years of stability, with periods in which its value fell and rose, the company’s moment has finally arrived: with artificial…
