Who will win the $1 trillion race?

One Wall Street analyst sticks their neck out and predicts Amazon will become the world’s first trillion dollar company by this time next year.

The largest technology firms – including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple, but also China’s Alibaba – have market valuations and revenues to rival even medium sized countries. Apple is currently the biggest company by market cap at $833 billion, followed by Amazon at $736 billion and Microsoft at $722bn, but unlike many of its rivals Amazon’s stock has not struggled recently.

The question of which one of these giants will be the first to reach $1 trillion has become more popular as the ceiling draws closer. After a stellar earnings, Macquarie's Ben Schachter thinks that Amazon is in pole position to win the race to becoming the first to hit the milestone market capitalisation, driven by its core retail business, subscription video, AWS and advertising.

"We believe that even without margin expansion in core retail, the other businesses can drive significant profit growth over the coming years and will make AMZN the first trillion dollar company," analyst Ben Schachter wrote in a note to clients. He also raised his 12-month price target on Amazon to $2,100 a share from $1,750.

"Our primary concern remains regulatory risk and the growing potential for political interference. AMZN's continued success is sure to attract more attention from governments around the world than ever before."

According to PWC last year, technology is the largest sector in terms of market cap ($3,582bn), in second place was the Financial sector ($3,532bn), recording the highest number of companies (21), Consumer goods ($2,660bn) came third.

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