In this article we are going to list the 15 biggest companies that originated in Silicon Valley. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 5 biggest companies that originated in Silicon Valley.
Over the past few decades and especially since the turn of the 21st century, technology has been increasing by leaps and bounds, resulting in the establishment of the tech industry, which has upended the dominance of traditional industries such as pharma, finance or construction. The United States has been at the forefront of development of technologies, which is why it is currently the biggest superpower in the world, even though its biggest rival China has close to four times the population of the US. The US is also home to some of the biggest tech companies in the entire world, including the most valuable company in the world.
Even in the United States, there is a region which is especially well known for being the home to many major tech companies, and is often called the tech capital of the world as well, which is Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley refers to a region in the state of California which is part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Silicon Valley is home to several cities, each of which are home to multiple Fortune 500 companies as well. The biggest city in Silicon Valley is San Jose, which has also become one of the most expensive cities in the world mainly because of the presence of major companies and a higher standard of living being maintained. Other major cities in Silicon Valley include Santa Clara, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale and Redwood City, all of which are home to at least one and generally more Fortune 500 companies. If you want to understand just how powerful Silicon Valley is, it has the third highest GDP per capita in the entire world, only after Zurich in Switzerland and Oslo in Norway. So why exactly is it called Silicon Valley? Well, it got the name due to several companies and innovators located in the area who were engaged in the production of silicon based transistors and integrated chip circuits.
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While there are at least 30 Fortune 100 companies in Silicon Valley, that’s not all. The area is famous for drawing innovative people and companies, which is why it is home to thousands of start-ups, accounting for a third of all investments made by venture capital funds in the country. Among other technologies, the silicon based integrated circuit, microcomputers and microprocessors were all developed in Silicon Valley, and the term Silicon Valley is used to describe any area concentrated with tech companies as a comparison, and the actual Silicon Valley even attracts a lot of people across the world to visit the area and hence, boosts tourism as well.
The link between Silicon Valley and tech has now existed for decades and the area was also the center of the dot com bubble in the 1990s and early 2000. The dot com bubble refers to a lot of speculation on Internet companies, leading to their prices rising massively over a short period, as Internet use grew more and more. This led to the NASDAQ index increasing by 400% before falling sharply, resulting in huge losses for investors, especially speculators.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused recessions and depressions across the world, as most countries went into lockdowns to prevent more cases and deaths. Most industries suffered, resulting in millions of lay-offs and many people being uncertain about where their next paycheck would come from. And while it has also impacted the tech sector, due to global supply chain and manufacturing issues, the tech industry has still seen some levels of success, and generally hasn’t been close to as hard hit as most other industries. One of the major benefits that tech companies had was that their employees could easily work remotely, something which people in the manufacturing sector can’t do, and hence, while operations were impacted, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
The biggest companies that originated in Silicon Valley have revenues which cumulatively are worth nearly $800 billion, while their profits are close to $170 billion and assets are worth more than $1.35 trillion. Furthermore, these companies are incredibly valuable which is why their market value as at March 2020 exceeded $3.57 trillion, which is incredible. These companies also provide direct employment to 877,000 people while providing indirect employment to millions more. To determine these companies, we have selected those originating in the aforementioned Silicon Valley cities and ranked them according to their revenue, profits, assets, market cap and employees, with all of the data being taken from the Fortune 500 list. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the companies originating from Silicon Valley and dominating the world, starting with number 15:
15. Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A)
Total revenue of the company in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 5,163
Total profit of the company in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 1,071
Total assets of the company in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 9,452
Total market value of the company as at March 2020 (in millions of dollars): 22,177
Total employees of the company in 2019: 16,300
The company makes and develops analytical instruments which are used in laboratories and was founded 22 years ago in 1999.
