IBM became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in 1967 after a major rise in its stock-market value.
International Business Machines, commonly called IBM, dominated the corporate-computing market during the 1960s. Its System/360 mainframe family, introduced in 1964, gave businesses a compatible range of computers and helped establish IBM as a central technology supplier.
IBM’s 1967 position came before the modern era of mega-cap technology companies. Market capitalization rankings then included industrial, telecommunications, energy, and computing companies, but the scale of public-company valuations was far smaller than it is today.
IBM’s later history included personal computers, enterprise software, consulting, and hybrid cloud services. The company’s early mainframe success is sometimes confused with the later rise of Microsoft and Apple, which became dominant in different parts of the technology industry.