Apple crossed $700 billion: Another milestone for the world's most valuable company

February 12, 2015

Shares of Apple stock today reached another all-time high, which in and of itself isn't shocking — Apple does that on a regular basis — but today market the point where Apple as a company crossed the $700 billion line. Apple has been the world's most valuable publicly-traded company for some time, but its skyrocketing share price has seen it rapidly pull away from every other company on the planet.

As of this writing, Apple's market capitalization — the combined value of all outstanding shares — sat at an astounding $705.32 billion. That's an amazing 64.36% increase from one year ago, the last time Apple passed oil giant ExxonMobil in the rankings. Exxon today sits at a market cap of $384 billion, down over the past few quarters (no doubt thanks to the general collapse of oil prices as of late), with none other than Apple rivals and sometimes frenemies Microsoft and Google nipping at Exxon's heels.

Apple's share price has been seen substantial growth since the record first quarter results that were recently released, leading some to say that Apple had somehow overcome such economic principles as the "Law of Large Numbers" (which states that this kind of growth becomes harder and harder to sustain as the sheer numbers needed to sustain it grow increasingly large and the uncommitted customer base to support it decreases). As CEO Tim Cook said during today's appearance at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference:

"We don't believe in old laws such as the law of large numbers. Steve Jobs always liked to say that 'Putting limits on your thinking [is] never good.' "