The 20 Most Valuable Companies In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:43AM EST · Published Sep 11, 9:00AM EDT

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The 20 Most Valuable Companies In America — © courtesy of Amazon.com Inc.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) have jockeyed for the lead as America’s most valuable company, each with a market cap of about $550 billion. One tech giant vs. another. A look at the top 20 American public corporations reveals several other close comparisons

One note is that the top five positions on the market cap table are tech companies, and have left large energy companies behind. After Apple and Alphabet are Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) at $435 billion, Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) at $364 billion, and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) at $360 billion.

All five companies are trying to play in at least one of the others’ backyards. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are among the cloud computing leaders. Amazon and Apple continue to fight each other for dominance in the streaming media market. Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet are all in the mobile OS market. The only company on the list without a significant challenger is Facebook, one of the reasons its market cap is so high.

Exxon Mobile (NYSE: XOM) is tied with Amazon in market cap, at $360 billion. Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is also on the list at $191 billion. Big oil has not been entirely kicked off the list

Walmart (NYSE: WMT) is on the list at $217 billion. Investors in rival Amazon and Walmart cannot help noting how far bricks and mortars have fallen behind e-commerce. Walmart is trying to catch up, piecemeal, most recently with its $3 billion buyout of Jet.com.

Two major banks are on the list, with market caps fairly close to one another. JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) at $240 billion and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) at $245 billion.

And, finally the two largest phone companies and wireless providers in the U.S. AT&T (NYSE: T) at $244 billion, and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) at $211 billion

(Notably, no car companies are on the list, a departure from decades ago

Top 20 market cap companies, courtesy of The Online Investor

Large Cap Company                       Ticker    Market Cap
($in billions)
Apple Inc                                          AAPL      555.71
Alphabet Inc                              GOOGL     541.90
Alphabet Inc                              GOOG      522.09
Microsoft Corporation                   MSFT      438.02
Facebook Inc                                   FB        364.99
Amazon.com Inc.                          AMZN      360.36
Exxon Mobil Corp.                       XOM       360.10
Johnson & Johnson                     JNJ       323.46
General Electric Co                      GE        269.82
Wells Fargo & Co.                        WFC       245.82
AT&T Inc                                       T         244.30
JPMorgan Chase & Co                  JPM       240.74
Procter & Gamble Co.                   PG        230.21
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.                   WMT       217.46
Verizon Communications Inc             VZ        211.23
Pfizer Inc                                         PFE       206.84
Visa Inc                                            V         191.94
Chevron Corporation                     CVX       191.05
Berkshire Hathaway Inc                 BRK.B     188.03
Coca-Cola Co (The)                        KO        182.44

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.