No company was the first to surpass a US$1 trillion market capitalization during the 18th century.
Market capitalization is a modern stock-market measure that depends on a company’s share price and shares outstanding. Although early chartered companies were enormously influential, their valuations were not recorded in the trillion-dollar scale used for modern public corporations.
The Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company are often described as exceptionally valuable historical businesses. Such comparisons usually estimate their value by converting historical currencies or comparing value with national economies, rather than reporting a directly comparable market capitalization.
The first widely recognized US$1 trillion market-cap milestone was reached by Apple in 2018. That distinction separates documented modern equity-market records from speculative estimates about early commercial empires.