Jobs and the Future of Work

These are the world's largest tech giants

An Amazon Prime van sits on a hill overlooking downtown Seattle during a press conference announcing Amazon.com's new program to help entrepreneurs build businesses delivering Amazon packages, including $1 million to fund startup costs for military veterans, at an event space in Seattle, Washington, U.S., June 27, 2018.  REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

The world's 20 largest tech companies now exclusively US or China-based. Image: REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

Jeff Desjardins
Founder and editor, Visual Capitalist

Large companies can be located all over the globe.

For example, massive auto companies can be found practically anywhere on a map. Ford (USA), Toyota (Japan), Volkswagen (Germany), Hyundai (South Korea), Volvo (Sweden), Tata Motors (India), and Magna (Canada) are just some of the biggest companies involved in the production of vehicles or parts.

While the banking, pharma, energy, and retail industries also have geographic spread as well, the same cannot be said for the rapidly-growing tech industry.

Image: Visual Capitalist

The clash of tech titans

The most recent edition of Mary Meeker’s famous Internet Trends 2018 report highlighted the top internet companies in the world by valuation, with an interesting and perhaps unintended outcome.

Of the 20 largest tech giants globally, a total of zero are located outside of the United States and China.

Here are the latest rankings of internet companies, using updated market caps for all public companies:

*In Meeker’s chart, she kept eBay-Paypal together as one entity. We’ve separated them based on the 2015 spinoff.
**Xiaomi’s valuation has been in question ahead of its July 9 IPO in Hong Kong, and we’ve used the most recent valuation estimate of $54 billion here.

In total, the above list of companies is worth $5.9 trillion, with a 75%-25% split in terms of USA/China.

It’s also worth noting that the list excludes Samsung, likely because the South Korean company is quite diversified in its manufacturing activities (TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners, batteries, microwave ovens, etc.).

A steep dropoff

Aside from the USA-China duality, the other major noticeable aspect of the list of the world’s largest tech giants is that it clearly shows a divide between top-tier companies and those further down the ladder. In fact, there is not a single company with a valuation between $200 billion and $450 billion.

The top seven companies on the list account for 81% of the total value of the list, and they are all above the $450B mark. These include behemoths like Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, but also two big Chinese companies as well (Tencent, Alibaba).

Meanwhile, the bottom 14 companies muster up just 19% of the value – a fact that underlines how hard it is to vault a tech company into the upper echelon of the market.

Have you read?
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Stay up to date:

Digital Communications

Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Digital Communications is affecting economies, industries and global issues
World Economic Forum logo

Forum Stories newsletter

Bringing you weekly curated insights and analysis on the global issues that matter.

Subscribe today

Investing in a more age-inclusive workforce can help us navigate demographic shifts

Kate Bravery and Mona Mourshed

December 20, 2024

How global corporations can support migrant workers

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum