It’s official.  Apple became the first company to hit a market capitalization of $3 trillion on Monday when their stock price topped out at $182.86 for a brief period. 

The company’s growth over the past few years is staggering.  Apple did not become a $1 trillion-dollar company until August 2, 2018.  One year later, they crossed the $2 trillion barrier on August 19, 2020. 

In 2021, Apple’s stop rose 34% as sales of iPhones and nearly all other products exceeded expectations. 

What’s fascinating to note is what this would have meant for the man synonymous with Apple, co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.

Jobs was the face of Apple as much or more so than Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos are with their companies, but the difference is Jobs owned very little Apple stock at the time of his debt. 

When Jobs passed 11 years ago, the fortune he accumulated and passed onto his wife primarily came from his stake in Disney, which as of today, would be worth nearly $22 billion. 

 Jobs had acquired his Disney shares after he sold the animation company he founded called Pixar in 2006 to Disney. If things had played out a little differently, Jobs would have ended up the richest person in the world. 

When Apple went publish in 1980, he owned 11 percent of the company, but five years later, he was pushed out as CEO, and in anger, he sold off all but one of his shares of stock.  The only reason he held on to that one share is because it allowed him access to investor reports. 

If Jobs or his estate still owned 11 percent of Apple today, it would be worth roughly $330 billion. 

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