Market Value: Nvidia is the most valuable company, SAP slumps

Despite the persistently difficult political and economic situation, the world's most valuable companies have gained massive value over the past year. The market capitalization of the 100 most expensive corporations increased by 23 percent, or ten trillion US dollars, within a year, reaching a new record high of 54.4 trillion US dollars (as of December 31, 2025). This result comes from the semi-annual analysis of the market capitalization of the world's most expensive corporations conducted by the consulting firm EY.

"The year 2025 was dominated by Artificial Intelligence on the world's stock exchanges," commented EY's Germany CEO Henrik Ahlers on the results of the latest evaluation. The euphoria surrounding new AI applications and business models has led to strong price gains worldwide. Companies in the USA and Asia primarily benefited from this. Among the eight corporations with the largest value increases in the Top 100 are exclusively tech giants from these two regions. "Europe, on the other hand, plays only a supporting role in the current AI race – once again, the risk of falling behind in a key technology looms," warns the consultant.

Stock Market Darling Nvidia

As a result of the AI wave, the dominance of the tech industry in general and US corporations in particular has solidified. The number of technology companies among the Top 100 increased from 24 to 27 last year. Their total value rose by 34 percent. The clear leader was the USA, where 20 of the 27 tech corporations are headquartered. Five are from Asia, and only two are based in Europe.

The most valuable company in the world at the end of the year was Nvidia, whose market capitalization increased by 38 percent to 4.5 trillion US dollars over the year. The chip manufacturer, which was even worth over five trillion US dollars at times, was able to pull away significantly in terms of market capitalization by a remarkable 500 billion US dollars from last year's leader Apple (value: 4 trillion US dollars). The Californian iPhone giant, which dominated the ranking of the most valuable companies for years, lost some of its luster according to stock market investors due to its unclear AI strategy.

Alphabet, meanwhile, rode the AI wave and improved its market capitalization by almost 1.5 trillion dollars to 3.8 trillion US dollars compared to the previous year. Google's parent holding thus overtook Microsoft, whose valuation increased by 460 million US dollars to 3.6 trillion US dollars. In fifth, sixth, and seventh place are Amazon (2.5 trillion US dollars, plus 7 percent), Meta (1.7 trillion US dollars, plus 12.5 percent), and Broadcom (1.6 trillion US dollars, plus 51 percent). Only in eighth place does the first company outside the USA follow with Saudi Arabian Oil Company (1.5 trillion US dollars, minus 15 percent).

ASML at the Top in Europe

The most valuable European corporation in the current ranking was ASML Holding in 24th place with a market capitalization of almost 419 billion US dollars. The Dutch manufacturer of lithography systems for semiconductor production thus left the most valuable German company – SAP – 21 places behind. The software company from Walldorf could not gain value compared to the previous year and was consequently pushed back thirteen places to 45th in the list with a valuation of 285 billion US dollars. SAP could not maintain the position (27th) and value (354 billion US dollars) reached in the middle of the year.

Otherwise, only Siemens (Rank 73, 218 billion US dollars) and Allianz (Rank 98, 174 billion US dollars) from Germany are represented in the Top 100. In contrast to its subsidiary T-Mobile US (Rank 72, 227 billion US dollars), Deutsche Telekom (Rank: 123, 154 billion US dollars) lost its Top 100 list position.

Two further figures from the current EY analysis show that Europe and Germany continue to play only a spectator role in terms of stock markets. Of the total market capitalization of the 100 most valuable companies in the world, 76 percent, or 41.5 trillion dollars, is attributable to North American companies, 15 percent (8 billion dollars) to Asian companies, and eight percent (4.4 trillion dollars) to European companies. At the end of 2025, Top 100 leader Nvidia alone was almost twice as valuable as all DAX 40 companies combined, whose cumulative market capitalization was 2.5 trillion dollars.

(wpl)