Quick Bites | 50 Most Valuable Companies

See below a breakdown of the world’s 50 most valuable companies, which represent US$34 trillion in combined market capitalisation. This highlights the dominance of the Technology sector ($19.3 trillion), followed by Healthcare ($3.8 trillion) and Consumer Goods. Unfortunately, no Australian company makes the cut.

Tech’s dominance is largely due to America’s trillion-dollar companies like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet though a few other countries are represented as well. This includes Taiwan’s TSMC, whose NYSE-listed shares have climbed over 60% YTD in 2024.

China’s most valuable company, Tencent, is also present. Tencent is currently valued at around $450 billion—significantly lower than its peak valuation of $916 billion in February 2021.

Looking elsewhere in this graphic, we can see that Conglomerates represent $1.5 billion in market cap. A conglomerate is typically a large company that owns controlling stakes in many other companies: the most valuable company of this type is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which at the time of writing has become the newest trillion-dollar stock. Over the past five years, its shares have climbed 130%.

Australia’s largest sectors are financials and resources, with technology and healthcare under-represented, highlighting the importance of gaining international equity exposure for a well-diversified portfolio.

Source: Visual Capitalist