Apple reached a market capitalization of $3 trillion during midday trading on Monday. As its stock price shot up to more than $182.80 during the first day of trading in 2022, the company's midday market cap briefly reached $3 trillion. That's not quite the same as being a $3 trillion company, though: Market cap is typically settled at the end of the trading day, and the price has fallen slightly from its peak. For now, Apple is more like a $2.99 trillion company.
The jump seemed to come in part after a report that Apple sold 27 million pairs of AirPods over the holiday season, and at the start of a year in which many expect Apple to announce its long-awaited AR headset along with an unusually large set of other new products.
Apple's climb to this point has been something of a hockey-stick chart: It became the first company to hit $1 trillion in 2018 after more than 40 years of operation. It hit $2 trillion in August 2020, just two years later, and is flirting with a $3 trillion valuation only 17 months after that. Its market cap continues to beat out other high-flying tech giants like Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft, which all have passed the $1 trillion mark. Microsoft now sits at about $2.5 trillion in market cap, making it the most likely next candidate to hit the $3 trillion mark.