Apple was founded in 1976, before it became one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne established Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976. The company’s first product was the Apple I, a computer circuit board designed primarily by Wozniak and sold as an assembled board rather than a complete consumer computer.
Apple was incorporated the following year, in January 1977, and the Apple II helped turn the young business into a major personal-computer company. Its later expansion into the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and services transformed its scale and profitability.
People sometimes confuse Apple’s founding date with its incorporation date or the 1984 launch of the Macintosh. Market capitalization is the value of a company’s publicly traded shares, so Apple’s later position among the world’s richest companies is separate from its 1976 origin.