The race to $1 trillion is over, with Apple (AAPL +1.18%) having recently become the first U.S. company to achieve a 13-figure market capitalization. The Cupertino-based tech giant has come a long way since the late Steve Jobs helped found the company back in the 1970s, and despite its immense size, Apple continues to grow at a substantial rate that many see creating lasting opportunities for investors down the road.
Yet as you can see below, Apple is far from the only company approaching the $1 trillion market cap mark. Many thought that Amazon.com (AMZN +0.53%) might actually beat Apple to the finish line, and fellow tech behemoths Alphabet (GOOGL +2.53%) (GOOG +2.92%) and Microsoft (MSFT +0.66%) weren't too far behind.
Data source: S&P Global Market Intelligence. Graph by author.
What's particularly impressive about Amazon is how far it has come so quickly. Apple is no slouch, with a 125% rise in market cap since 2013. But Amazon's market cap has risen almost sevenfold in just five years, outpacing the nearly sixfold increase for Facebook, Microsoft's tripling, and Alphabet's near-triple over the same time period. Between the company's e-commerce marketplace and its cloud services division, Amazon has plenty of potential for future growth as well.
Apple might have won this race, but there are several stocks that are likely to join it in the near future. Moreover, if past trends continue, Amazon's in a good position to be the first over the $2 trillion mark down the road. Of course, after nearly 10 years of bull market gains, the threat of a sizable stock market decline taking all of these companies away from the $1 trillion level is also a serious possibility.
