From 2010 Titans to 2025 Giants: The Shocking Reshuffle of the World’s 5 Biggest Companies

Tech giants eat old money for breakfast—here's how the corporate elite got flipped on its head.

Back in 2010, oil barons and retail dinosaurs ruled the roost. Today? It's all about AI overlords and crypto-adjacent trillionaires.

The new kings of the hill didn't climb—they bypassed entire industries. No dusty shareholder meetings here, just algorithm-fueled market domination.

Funny how 'too big to fail' somehow never applies to the companies actually writing the rules now. But hey, at least the stock tickers look prettier.

Then and now

The table below ranks the stock market's five biggest companies (as measured by market cap) as of the end of 2010.

Data source: Americanbusinesshistory.org

One name conspicuously missing from this list is General Electric. While it was the world's biggest company through the latter part of last century, by 2010 computer technologies and consumerism were better growth opportunities than industrial manufacturing...as(AMZN -0.23%) had already begun proving in earnest.

Image source: Getty Images.

And today's biggest companies? Given the aforementioned evolution of computer technology and the explosion of consumerism, no real surprises here (note that Amazon cracked into the top five in 2017, where it has remained ever since):

Data source: Finviz. 

Investors love to track company size

Investors get very excited when companies muscle to higher and higher market caps. But bigger isn't necessarily better. After all, the returns on your stocks are only relative to their own historical prices, and not market-cap-based.