Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) has become the fourth publicly traded company to achieve a $3 trillion U.S. market capitalization.
Shares of the technology company rose more than 4.5% on Sept. 15, closing at $251.61 U.S. per share and pushing the company’s market cap to $3.05 trillion U.S.
Only Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), and Apple (AAPL) have bigger market capitalizations than Alphabet and are the other public companies valued at more than $3 trillion U.S.
Alphabet’s stock has been rallying since early September after the company received a favourable ruling in the U.S. antitrust case brought against it.
The U.S. Department of Justice wanted Alphabet to be broken up. Specifically, the government wanted Google to divest its Chrome internet browser.
However, the judge in the case decided against a break-up, sending GOOGL stock to an all-time high on a split-adjusted basis.
Alphabet shares are now up more than 30% this year, compared with a 15% gain for the Nasdaq exchange on which the stock trades.
The $3 trillion U.S. milestone comes a little more than 20 years after Google’s initial public offering (IPO) and 10 years after the creation of Alphabet as a holding company, with the Google search engine as its main subsidiary.
Alphabet is currently fending off new competition caused by the rise of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and scrambling to launch its own A.I. products and services.
