I was recently surprised to learn the extent to which the United States dominates the list of world’s largest corporation by market capitalization. As the chart posted below shows, the seven most valuable companies are headquartered in the U.S., as are 16 of the top 20. It is an open question as to whether this preponderance is due mainly to the underlying dynamics of the American economy or to the over-valuation of the U.S. stock market stemming mainly from unrealistic optimism about AI. Presumably time will tell.
This discovery prompted me to begin mapping the locations of the world’s top companies and how these geographical patterns changed over time. My initial efforts will be focused on market capitalization, which limits me to publicly traded companies. If privately held companies could be considered in an assessment the world’s top companies by valuation, the results would probably be similar but not the same. Difficulties in estimating the value of private companies, however, preclude this option [1].
The map posted below shows the locations of the headquarters of companies with current (December 2025) market capitalization of over one trillion U.S. dollars. Nine of these eleven firms are American. More surprising, all nine have headquarters west of the Mississippi River. The west coast, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, dominates the map. This preponderance would have been more pronounced if Tesla had not moved from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas in 2021. (Note that these circles are not precisely placed; if two or more firms are located in the same city or even the same metro area, their corresponding circles are simply offset from each other so that they are all visible. Forthcoming posts will examine smaller areas to allow more precisely mapping.)
The next issue is whether similar geographical patterns hold for companies in the next tier down, those with market capitalization between $500 billion and $999 billion. As the next map shows, only seven companies fall in this category. All but one are located in the United States. Of these six firms, four are headquartered west of the Mississippi River. Only one, however, is in the San Franciso Bay Area, whereas two are in Texas. But until 2020, Oracle’s corporate headquarters had been on the shore of San Francisco Bay; it is now in Austin, Texas.
The final map combines the spatial information found in the first two and adds two additional circles to cover the full top-twenty list (found in the first illustration). These circles represent Samsung, headquartered in Seoul, South Korean, and Johnson & Johnson, headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on the outskirts of the New York City. What strikes me most about this map is the absence of circles in Europe and Japan. To what extent does this pattern hold as we move down the list of the top companies by market capitalization? That will be the topic of the next GeoCurrents post.
[1] ChatGPT tells me that OpenAI would rank in 18th place, at $500 billion estimated private valuation, with SpaceX ($400 billion) not far behind – although the same chatbot also states that “recent discussions [of SpaceX] point toward ~ $800 billion in a share sale/secondary sale,” which would put it in 15th place. Grok agrees with the $500 billion figure for OpenAI and the $400 billion figure for SpaceX, but claims an estimated valuation of $480 billion for China’s ByteDance, which ChatGPT pegs at $220 billion, indicating both the depth of the problem and the limits using AI for such information.
A more severe difficulty arises with secretive private companies that are enormous in terms of revenue, but whose valuation remains highly uncertain. According to ChatGPT, the top firms in this category are Vitol, based in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and Singapore-based Trafigura.
(Note: Shortly after this post went up, I read that SpaceX is planning an initial public offering in 2026, “with a report suggesting the company would target a $1.5 trillion valuation.” SpaceX is headquartered in far southern Texas, in the town of Starbase, formerly Boca Chica Village, with an estimated population of 500.