Silicon Valley is thought of as the technology capital of the U.S., but it is the Seattle area that now boasts the two most-valuable companies.
Microsoft and Amazon closed Thursday with market capitalizations of $838.1 billion and $830.8 billion, per CNBC. In third place is Apple at $829.1 billion, which saw its stock fall 1.1 percent Thursday, while Microsoft and Amazon were on the rise.
Microsoft took the number one spot from Apple last week, and the two companies volleyed the title of most-valuable company back and forth throughout the week. Amazon, which briefly crossed the $1 trillion market cap mark earlier this year, saw its stock rebound recently after a couple of down weeks.
Market cap numbers aren’t going to change how these companies do business day-to-day, but the development is a big milestone for the Seattle tech community. Microsoft and Amazon’s ascensions have been powered by their cloud computing divisions, helping Seattle earn the title of Cloud City.
Microsoft and Amazon also act as a center of gravity for the region, attracting talent from all over the globe. That has fueled a wave of out-of-town companies setting up shop to get access to the region’s strong roster of talent.
As of today’s close, @Microsoft and @amazon are #1 and #2 market cap companies in the world. Seattle becoming global leader at intersections of innovation pic.twitter.com/dC8CktTEez
— Matt McIlwain (@mattmcilwain) December 6, 2018
Don’t expect the cloud rivals and occasional allies in Microsoft and Amazon to stop what they’re doing and pop champagne this afternoon.
“This is a metric that nobody on the senior leadership team is tracking,” Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela said during a talk at Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs last week. “We really aren’t looking at, are we five today, are we four today.”
In the 45 seconds he spent addressing the company’s market capitalization at the event, Capossela said: “I’ve already spent way more time talking about this tonight than I’ve ever spent talking about it at the company.”
“Nobody is sitting around high-fiving when the stock hits some new high,” Capossela said. “We are like ‘wow, the bar just went up dramatically.’ So it’s a very humble tone; there’s not a lot of, ‘woo, we’re killing it.’”