Apple is almost worth the same as Britain’s GDP at $3,040,000,000,000

Apple’s value has once again topped $3trillion (£2.3trillion) cementing its position as the world’s richest company.

The tech giant’s stock hit a record high of $193 in trading on Wall Street yesterday as it continued an upward march that has seen the share price rise 54 per cent so far this year. 

It means it is now worth $3.04trillion, more than the combined value of Google parent company Alphabet and Amazon, which are valued at $1.5trillion and $1.3trillion respectively.

The iPhone maker was the first company in the world to achieve a value of $1trillion back in 2018, then two years later became the first to be worth $2trillion. 

In fact, the landmark figure puts Apple’s valuation as just short of the UK’s GDP ($3.07million).

But Apple is far from the most valuable company in history, with the record currently held by the Dutch East India Company, which hit a valuation of roughly $9trillion at today’s prices in the 1630s.

It was founded as a private merchant company with a 20-year monopoly on spice trading around modern-day Indonesia, employing around 70,000 people worldwide. 

The trading company, widely considered to be the world’s first multinational corporation, was also the first business to offer shares to the public.

But this did not come without a cost: the Dutch East India Company transported around 50,000 slaves to colonies to prop up its mammoth operation.

Apple hit the $3trillion mark briefly last year until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global stock markets tumbling and the firm struggled with lower sales after an outbreak of Covid-19 shut down one of its key factories in China. 

But it rebounded strongly this year, helped by large buybacks, a process by which a firm purchases its own shares to reduce the total, boosting the price of the remaining stock.

The company hit the headlines last month when it unveiled its virtual reality headset, known as the Vision Pro, which carries a price tag of $3,499 (£2,850).

‘We believe Apple’s fair valuation could be in the $3.5trillion range with a case for a $4trillion valuation by 2025,’ said Dan Ives, managing director of US research firm Wedbush Securities.