Three Companies Worth More Than 45 Years of Tech Listings

Three Companies Worth More Than 45 Years of Tech Listings

SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are together valued at about $5.2 trillion, more than the $4.1 trillion combined market value of all 3,365 US technology companies that went public between 1980 and 2025.

The comparison looks startling because it measures starting lines. That $4.1 trillion is what those 3,365 companies were worth on their first day of trading, not what they grew into. Microsoft was worth $777 million the day it listed in 1986 and Amazon $438 million in 1997. Both are thousands of times bigger today, and none of that later growth is inside the $4.1 trillion.

Two other things belong in the picture. The historical figure is not adjusted for inflation, so a 1980s dollar is being added straight to a 2026 dollar. And on the $5.2 trillion side, Anthropic is counted at the valuation investors expect when it lists and OpenAI at the private valuation currently under discussion. Neither has cleared a public market yet.

Source: Financial Times and Jay Ritter, University of Florida (Image: @glocalinvestor)