GAFAM Market Cap Jumps $2.7 Trillion Over Past Five Years

Following a strong third quarter earnings report, Microsoft became the second U.S. company to close at a market capitalization of above $1 trillion on Tuesday, joining its old rival Apple in having reached that milestone. Amazon had also briefly joined that elusive list last fall, but only surpassed the trillion-dollar mark in intraday trading, never ending a day above it.

By Thursday evening, Microsoft had fallen back below the trillion-dollar valuation, but still remains ahead of Apple in the never-ending tussle for the unofficial title of most valuable company in the world. Following a long reign of oil and gas companies, tech companies have dominated that ranking in recent years, with all of the so-called GAFAM companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) seeing sharp increases in market capitalization over the past decade.

In the past five years alone, the five most prominent U.S. tech companies saw their collective market capitalization surge by more than $2.7 trillion, with Amazon seeing the biggest gain of $794 billion since May 2014.