Apple held the world’s largest market capitalization immediately before Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO.
Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering made it the world’s most valuable publicly traded company when its shares began trading in December 2019. Before that listing, Apple was widely regarded as the company with the highest market capitalization, although the exact ranking could change with daily share-price movements.
Saudi Aramco priced its offering at 32 Saudi riyals per share and raised about $25.6 billion, making it the largest IPO at the time. Its debut valuation was approximately $1.9 trillion, above Apple’s then-market value.
The comparison concerns publicly traded market capitalization. It should not be confused with enterprise value, private-company valuation, annual sales, or the total value of a country’s state-owned assets.