So you may have already heard that Apple’s valuation crossed one trillion dollars on Thursday August 2nd, but you may not know exactly what that means. So before we get into the story of how Apple grew to become a one trillion dollar company, let’s first get an understanding how a company’s value is calculated. So you can calculate any companies value by multiplying how many shares of that company exist by how much each share is worth. And whatever number you get is called the company valuation, or value. Now this number constantly changes depending on whether the company’s share price goes up or down, or if they initiate a stock buyback, so although Apple has broke the one trillion dollar mark, they may fall back under that number as their value moves up and down.

So now that we understand how Apple’s value is calculated, let’s explore their incredible journey from a one hundred million dollar company to a one trillion dollar company. It all started on December 12th, 1980. That’s when Apple went public and first listed on the stock market. They were able to sell 4.6 million shares at twenty-two dollars a piece. Which meant at that time, Apple was worth 101.2 million dollars. Now you may be wondering why so many people bought Apple stock at that time considering the company had just been founded four years earlier. Well in those four years Apple had accomplished quite a bit. They had already released the Apple I, Apple II, and Apple III, with revenue increasing by 533% every year. That meant by 1980 Apple was generating $118 million in revenue annually. And that kind of growth was definitely something investors wanted a piece of. So there was actually a very high level of anticipation of Apple becoming listed on the stock market, and when it finally happened, investors jumped at the opportunity. But despite this financial head start, Apple was worth just 1/10,000 of what it is today.