Boasting monster market caps greater than the GDPs of many modern developed countries, the most valuable companies of all time have been worth bewildering sums of money at their peak.

From colonial era trading enterprises to 21st century tech giants, we reveal the 20 firms that have the highest valuations in history, adjusted for inflation. All dollar amounts in US dollars.

American oil and gas titan ExxonMobil enjoyed a stellar 2007, making what was then a record profit of $40.6 billion (£30.8bn).

As a result, the energy corporation's share price soared, giving the Texas-based business a best-ever market cap of $505.7 billion in October 2007, the equivalent of $692 billion (£527.6bn) today. ExxonMobile was in fact the world's most valuable firm for much of the early 2000s.

ExxonMobil's luck was in again during the early 2010s when global oil prices went through the roof. However, the company's value was never able to regain the breathtaking heights of October 2007.

The oil glut of 2014 has resulted in lower prices of the commodity and hasn't helped ExxonMobil's current market cap, which stands at a respectable $367.7 billion (£280bn) right now. However, the US does still remain one of the world's biggest oil producers.

Founded in 1984, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) is currently the world's largest bank. In 2020, it reported a whopping $48.1 billion (£36.7bn) profit, and is estimated to have more than $5 trillion (£3.8tn) in assets.  

The bank's market value spiked to $525.15 billion (£400bn) in October 2007, which is $718.6 billion (£548bn) in today's money. Over the next decade, this figure stayed largely in the $300 billion (£228bn) range with another dramatic jump in 2018 to $574.2 billion (£437.8bn).

However, the company's shares plummeted in summer 2020 when it lost its first-place position as China's most valuable public company. Now valued at $255.5 billion (£194.8bn), it has not rallied in the last two years.  

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is among the top semiconductor manufacturers in the world. Now retired, the company's billionaire former chairman and CEO Morris Chang (pictured) worked for Texas Instruments before joining a Taiwanese research group that later became TSMC.

Under his guidance, TSMC became the first Taiwanese company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

TSMC's competitors include Intel and Samsung, although the Taiwanese firm is the hands-down winner when comparing total market value. Its market cap has more than doubled since 2018, even reaching a high of $729.5 billion (£556.2bn) in January 2022.

However, TSMC's stock has fallen since the start of 2022. Some analysts have pinned this to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with investors potentially worried about Taiwan's relations with China. As of mid-March, it has a market cap of $552.2 billion (£421bn).

Berkshire Hathaway owns an assortment of famous names and has major interests in Kraft Heinz, The Coca-Cola Company, Bank of America, and more.

Headed up by investment genius Warren Buffett (pictured), the Nebraska-based conglomerate, is famed for having the most expensive share price in history.

At the time of writing, each Berkshire Hathaway Class A share is worth a jaw-dropping $500,000 (£381k). This gives the group a market cap of $715.5 billion (£543bn). 

NVIDIA is one of the globe's largest computer chip developers and its graphics processors are widely used for gaming. In the business world, the technology helps power computer-assisted design and other graphics applications. 

The California-based company saw its value more than double in 2021, topping out at $821.99 billion (£626.7bn) in November.

CEO Jensen Huang described demand for NVIDIA chips as "exceptional" and attributes this to increases in artificial intelligence and voice recognition software. While its value has dropped over the last few months NVIDIA is the eighth most valuable company in the world according to its market cap.

Chinese e-commerce colossus Alibaba was founded in 1999 by former chairman Jack Ma (pictured), who stepped down in September 2019.

The hugely successful conglomerate, which encompasses everything from electronic payment services to search engines and cloud computing, hit a peak market cap of $837.8 billion (£638.7bn) in October 2020.

China's answer to Amazon, the Hangzhou-based group's stock price surged during the pandemic with locked down citizens forced to turn online to shop and work.

However, since May 2021, US-China trade war jitters have sent the conglomerate's stock price on a downward trajectory and its market cap is currently trailing at $326.3 billion (£248.8bn).

Chinese multinational Tencent was founded in 1998, a year before Alibaba. It has grown to become the world's largest gaming company, one of the biggest social media firms on the planet and a global leader in entertainment and artificial intelligence. Its market cap peaked at $916 billion (£698bn) in February 2021.

For a while, tighter gaming regulations stalled the conglomerate's growth and depressed its share price. Tencent lost out to Alibaba, which overtook it as China's most valuable business. However, since then it's become the most valuable public company in the country.

Dating back to 1892, General Electric (GE) thrived throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.

The US conglomerate, which spans consumer electronics, energy, aviation, healthcare, manufacturing and more, peaked in value following the turn of the millennium, with its market cap reaching $594 billion in August 2000. That's the equivalent of $984 billion (£748bn) in today's money.

GE fared well until the global financial crisis of 2008, which hit the business particularly hard. The share price went south again in 2017 with the industrial conglomerate faltering as its profitability tanked, and it's barely stabilised since. At the time of writing, GE's market cap is a relatively disappointing $104.7 billion (£79.8bn).

Established in 1870 by Gilded Age tycoons John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler, Standard Oil ruled the roost in the early 1900s. Thanks to the success of the firm, which monopolised the oil industry in the US, Rockefeller amassed almost unimaginable wealth, becoming one of the wealthiest people of modern times. 

Needless to say, Standard Oil was worth big bucks, and then some. Its inflation-adjusted value during the early 1900s is estimated by some experts at $1 trillion (£760bn) or greater.

In 1911, the US Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly and it was broken up into a number of smaller firms. Nonetheless, several of the so-called 'Baby Standards' operate to this day, including the extremely valuable ExxonMobil.

Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room, Facebook has gone on to conquer the globe. The social media giant, now known as Meta Platforms, pulled in revenues of $55.8 billion (£43.8bn) in 2018 and its market cap peaked at a then-record $628 billion (£463bn) in July that year.

Its upward trend wasn't to continue for too long, however, as the Cambridge Analytica data scandal rocked investor confidence and sent its share price through the floor. But after a brief slump at the start of 2020, the tech giant has more than recovered...

In September 2021 – just before announcing its rebrand to Meta Platforms – the company saw its market cap tip over the trillion dollar threshold to peak at $1.07 trillion (£820bn). Only three months earlier, it had became the fifth US company to hit the trillion-dollar mark.

As of March 2022, its market cap has slumped to little more than half its highest heights, now down to $586 billion (£447bn). 

Tesla co-founder Elon Musk is the richest person in the world so it's not too surprising that the electric car manufacturer is the world's sixth most valuable company. Musk hopes to revolutionise the way people travel and accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Roadster, the firm's first car, launched in 2008, and in 2019 it revealed designs for truck and SUV models. 

The manufacturer's share price soared in October 2021 after announcing a $4 billion (£3bn) deal to sell 100,000 cars to rental company Hertz.

These gains meant the market cap topped the one-trillion mark, peaking in November at $1.23 trillion (£940bn). Tesla stayed in these upper echelons through mid-January before seeing its value start to drop to its current $898.4 billion (£685bn).

The state-run PetroChina was the first enterprise on the planet to surpass a trillion-dollar valuation. A frenzy of speculation shortly after the company's flotation on the Shanghai stock market in early November 2007 pushed its share price skyward and its market cap up to a staggering $1.1 trillion, the equivalent of $1.5 trillion (£1.1tn) today.

Stock market experts, including Warren Buffett, warned the rash of speculation wouldn't last and they were proven right. PetroChina's share price nosedived in mid-November 2007 and continued its slide until early 2009. Over that period, the price dropped by over 70%.

Today, the company is worth a fraction of what it was in early November 2007, with a current market value of just $165 billion (£125.8bn).

Another company that has hit the heady heights of $1 trillion is Amazon. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people on the planet, the e-commerce and cloud computing juggernaut rocked a market cap of $1 trillion (£760bn) for a brief time in September 2018 when the company's share price spiked during intraday trading.

Its market cap has since skyrocketed, and reached a record-breaking $1.88 trillion (£1.38tn) in July 2021. 

After soaring in value during the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon is still riding high. Its current market cap is $1.58 trillion (£1.2tn), making it the world's fifth most valuable company.

It comes as no surprise that the world's number one search engine is worth incredible sums of money. The value of Google's parent company Alphabet hit a trillion-dollar market cap in January 2020, making it the fourth American company to do so. This achievement meant its value was higher than the GDP of the Netherlands. And it didn't stop there...

The business saw its valuation peak at an all-time high of $1.98 trillion (£1.4tn) in early November 2021. Its valuation is currently hovering around $1.77 trillion (£1.35tn), so it'll be interesting to see if more record-breaking results will come in 2022. 

Microsoft became the world's most valuable publicly-traded company at the height of the dotcom boom in late December 1999 when its market cap rose to an impressive $613 billion, which translates to around $1 trillion (£760bn) in today's money. However, in recent years it has smashed that valuation.

The tech giant, which was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in an Albuquerque garage, saw its market value climb to the magic figure of $1 trillion (£760bn) at the end of April 2019, the third US company to do so.

Microsoft has since seen its market cap grow steadily up to a peak of $2.5 trillion (£1.9tn) in November 2021.

Apple first reigned supreme as the world's most valuable company from 2013 to 2018, and became the first American non state-run firm to reach a market value of $1 trillion (£771bn) on 1 August 2018.

But the maker of iconic products such as the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, went one better early this year when its market cap briefly jumped to a record-breaking $3 trillion (£2.2tn) in January 2022.

Currently worth $2.94 trillion (£2.1tn), Apple is now the world's most valuable company – a formidable start to the new year. 

Saudi Arabia's national gas and petrol enterprise is worth considerably more than its counterparts in China and elsewhere. Based on the company's first disclosure of earnings, which were reported in April 2019, Saudi Aramco was the world's most profitable firm. No wonder; it's reportedly the largest producer of crude oil around the globe. 

The company's value peaked at the end of the 2000s in line with the spike in global oil prices. In 2010, University of Texas finance professor Sheridan Titman estimated that Saudi Aramco was worth somewhere between $2.2 trillion and $3.6 trillion, the equivalent of $2.86 trillion (£2.2tn) and $4.75 trillion (£3.6tn) today.

If Titman was correct, Saudi Aramco potentially could have pipped Apple to the $3 trillion post – but Apple is certainly the first company to have offically reached the milestone. Saudi Aramco is currently valued at $2.36 trillion (£1.8tn).

A British joint-stock firm, the South Sea Company was formed in 1711 and granted a monopoly over all trade in South America and islands in its vicinity.

Investors rushed to put their money into the enterprise, which, "fuelled by extravagant rumours", was poised to offer sensational returns. The company share price skyrocketed.

By mid-1720, shares had climbed to £1,000 a piece, up from £100 earlier in the year, giving the company a market value of as much as £420 million ($551m). That's roughly equivalent to $4.98 trillion (£3.8tn) in today's money.

But then the whole thing came crashing down. The prospect of bountiful trade was, as it turned out, wishful thinking. The bubble burst catastrophically, bankrupting many of the shareholders.

Originally called the Mississippi Company, the Company of the Indies created a bubble around the same time as the South Sea Company. Founded in 1684, the French firm held a monopoly over trade in North America and the West Indies.

Enticed by exaggerated claims of wealth in Louisiana from the economist John Law (pictured), speculators poured crazy sums of money into the company in 1719. It's interesting to note that the word "millionaire" was coined around this period to describe the speculators who were ploughing money into the bubble.

Within the space of a year, the company's share price rose 1,900% and the value of the business increased to $7.52 trillion (£5.7tn) in today's money.

When investors began to demand payment in silver or gold instead of paper certificates, Law tried to cap the amount of coins distributed, triggering steep inflation. In late 1720, when investors realised the the supposed trove of wealth in Louisiana was not going to materialise the bubble popped once and for all. 

The most valuable firm of all time, the Dutch East India Company, was established in 1602 and had a monopoly on the spice trade in Asia.

The value of the company, which was the first in the world to conduct an IPO, ballooned outrageously starting in 1634 after its ships carrying tulip bulbs sparked the infamous "tulip mania" in Holland.

The value of the bulbs reached ridiculously high levels, pushing the company's share price up 1,200%.

Right before the bubble burst in 1637, the firm was worth 78 million Dutch guilders. In 2022, that's at least $9 trillion (£6.9tn), more than the equivalent of the combined GDPs of Germany, the UK, and France.

From Facebook to Red Bull, discover the businesses that have produced the most billionaires.