Biggest companies in the world by market cap in 2000

Figure 1.

"The technology sector has been the darling of US equity markets — and by extension, the global economy — for some time now. In fact, for the past 10 years, a mega-cap slice of this market, the Magnificent 7¹ have dominated in terms of performance, turning in 36.72% annualized (compared to 11.41% for the broad S&P 500 Index, a proxy for the US equity market).

It may be hard to imagine a world in which these household names aren’t the center of equity outperformance but think back to the early days of the internet. In 2000, it was just as hard to imagine the most dominant global companies (Figure 1) going anywhere. Today, only one of 2000’s "winners" (Microsoft) remains a top performer."

¹ Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla

This chart and excerpt are sourced from the report by Andrew Heiskell, “Chart in focus: What tech in 2000 teaches us about tomorrow“, Wellington Management, October 2025.

Access the original report