The market capitalization of the seven most valuable American technology companies, namely Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia, has increased by 3.4 trillion dollars in 2020.

With optimism over iPhone sales, demand for Microsoft’s Teams product, the development of Amazon’s e-commerce platform, and the strength of Google’s and Facebook’s advertising business, Big Tech’s business was slowed by Covid-19 and the increasing number of investigations opened against them, related to their dominant position on the market.

The sharp rise in Tesla shares was the biggest surprise. Tesla shares rose nearly nine times last year, with their market capitalization rising from $ 76 billion at the beginning of the year to $ 669 billion at the close of trading on Thursday, News.ro writes.

Despite the closure of factories at the beginning of the pandemic, Tesla recovered and delivered a record number of vehicles in the third quarter.

In the last month of 2020, Tesla became the largest company to be included in the S&P 500 index.

Meanwhile, chip maker Nvidia has doubled in value in 2020, ending the year with a market capitalization of $ 323 billion and becoming the seventh most valuable technology company and the 16th largest company in United States.

Its graphics processors for gaming devices sold out so quickly that the company struggled to meet demand.

Nvidia chips are also increasingly required by data centers, where higher volume requires higher speeds. In November, Nvidia agreed to buy mobile device chip maker Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $ 40 billion in a second major deal announced by a US technology company in 2020. However, the deal could be blocked by Chinese regulators.

By far, the largest increase in market capitalization was recorded by Apple, with an increase of almost 1 trillion dollars, due to an advance of shares of 81%.

Amazon’s market capitalization, which benefited from growing consumer and cloud computing business, rose $ 710 billion.

Microsoft had a capitalization increase of $ 480 billion, Alphabet of $ 268 billion, and Facebook of $ 193 billion.

The growth was reflected in the top of the richest people. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the richest man in the world, followed by Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates drops to fourth place, overtaken by French luxury industry mogul Bernard Arnault. In fifth place is Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO.

Forbes World Billionaires Top (Real-Time):

1. Jeff Bezos (Amazon, USA) – $ 189.7 billion

2. Elon Musk (Tesla, USA) – $ 155.6 billion

3. Bernard Arnault (LVMH, France) – $ 150.9 billion

4. Bill Gates (Microsoft, USA) – $ 120.3 billion

5. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, USA) – $ 100.3 billion

6. Larry Ellison (Oracle, USA) – $ 88.2 billion

7. Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway, USA) – $ 87.5 billion

8. Zhong Shanshan (Nongfu Spring, Wantai, China) – $ 85.4 billion

9. Larry Page (Google, USA) – $ 77.2 billion

10. Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries Ltd., India) – $ 76.2 billion