The Fortune 500, now in its 72nd year, tracks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue. Each year, companies are ranked by how much they’ve made (or lost) and by how their market caps and bottom lines rank within their cohorts.
Some of the largest F500 companies have revenues that dwarf the GDPs of most of the world’s economies.
Take, for example, Nvidia, which would be considered the world’s fourth-largest economy were it a country. Nvidia is worth more than Japan. Apple exceeds India. Amazon’s market value tops Brazil’s entire annual economic output. A Fortune analysis of Fortune 500 market capitalizations (using data from the end of March) against World Bank GDP data finds that nine U.S. companies now carry market values larger than all but a handful of the world’s national economies—and a tenth is close behind.
The comparison uses market capitalization—the total value of a company’s outstanding shares—set against 2024 GDP figures in current U.S. dollars from the World Bank. The two metrics measure different things: GDP reflects the annual value of goods and services a country produces, while market cap reflects what investors collectively believe a company is worth. But placed side by side, the numbers illuminate just how concentrated corporate value has become at the top of the American market.
