While unicorns (434 as of Oct 2020) are private companies with $1 Billion in valuation, the public companies with $1 Trillion in market capitalization are only 4 – Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
If we were to predict the next trillion $ in market capitalization companies, the obvious ones are Alibaba ($BABA), Tencent ($TCEHY) and Facebook ($FB).
Beyond these if we look over the next 10 years the companies with the highest potential to be $1 trillion are likely companies with fast growth and incredibly large market potentials.
There are 5 sectors that I believe are large enough to support the next trillion dollar companies.
- Finance (Square, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard)
- Technology (Salesforce, Adobe, Nvidia)
- Retail and commerce (Shopify, Mercardo Libre, Etsy)
- Pharma and health (None I believe yet can get there in the next 5 years)
- Automobile & Media (Tesla, Netflix)
In each of these segments there are established companies such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Walmart, J&J, Pfizer, Merck, GM, Toyota.
I don’t think any of these companies (except Walmart) have any chance of being a trillion $ company, unless they actively acquire other companies in their space – which will invite antitrust concerns.
As of Oct 2020, here is the market cap of these companies.
| Company | Ticker Symbol | Market Cap |
| Square | $80B | |
| Paypal | $229B | |
| Mastercard | $345B | |
| VISA | $448B | |
| Salesforce | $230B | |
| Nvidia | $344B | |
| Shopify | $129B | |
| Mercado Libre | $54B | |
| Etsy | $17B | |
| Tesla | $387B | |
| Netflix | $225B | |
| Alibaba | $803B | |
| Tencent | $652B | |
| $774B |
