Apple was the first public company to surpass a $1 trillion market capitalization during the 2010s.
Apple passed the threshold in August 2018, becoming the first public company to do so using the commonly cited closing and intraday calculations of that period. Its achievement followed years of expansion in the iPhone business and increasing revenue from services such as the App Store.
The phrase “public company” means that shares are available for trading on a stock exchange. The market-cap milestone therefore depended on both Apple’s share price and the number of shares outstanding, rather than on a single company asset or bank balance.
Apple’s record was soon followed by other major technology companies. Amazon crossed $1 trillion in September 2018, while Microsoft and Alphabet later joined the same valuation tier.