10 November 2021
While some businesses have made the decision to downsize their offices and studios during the pandemic, others have taken the opportunity to expand their footprint and build a bigger space for their employees to enjoy.
With companies including Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet operating with a market capital of over 1,500 billion U.S dollars, these companies, in fact, hold bigger financial power than countries such as Australia, Spain and the Netherlands.
We wanted to find out more about how these companies fare against existing countries, specifically when we take into account their physical presence and how much square footage on the Earth they control. Below, we’ve calculated how much of the Earth’s space the world’s largest companies take up.
| Company | Market capitalisation 2021, in billion U.S dollars | Total sq ft | Percentage of Earth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walmart | 396.1 | 1,115,756,000 | 0.00002032% |
| Apple | 2,252.30 | 362,098,560 | 0.00000660% |
| Amazon | 1,711.80 | 288,000,000 | 0.00000525% |
| LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton | 380.3 | 227,636,500 | 0.00000415% |
| Alphabet | 1,538.90 | 140,000,000 | 0.00000255% |
| JPMorgan Chase | 464.8 | 119,700,000 | 0.00000218% |
| Alibaba Group | 657.5 | 55,649,407 | 0.00000101% |
| Microsoft | 1,966.60 | 51,566,426 | 0.00000094% |
| Samsung Electronics | 510.5 | 40,492,100 | 0.00000074% |
| 870.5 | 40,320,615 | 0.00000073% | |
| Mastercard | 383.6 | 40,171,000 | 0.00000073% |
| Berkshire Hathaway | 624.4 | 36,455,300 | 0.00000066% |
| Tencent Holdings | 773.8 | 23,970,00 | 0.00000044% |
| Tesla | 710.1 | 22,695,000 | 0.00000041% |
| Johnson and Johnson | 427.1 | 18,035,988 | 0.00000033% |
| NVIDIA | 396.1 | 7,179,530 | 0.00000013% |
| Taiwan Semiconductor | 558.1 | 782,000 | 0.00000001% |
To calculate how much square footage each company owns, we took a look at publicly available information on their office spaces, retail units and warehouses. This gave us an estimate of the land space which each company is currently occupying.
With factories totalling 21.6 million square feet, and 438 showrooms across the world, we calculated that Tesla would eclipse Vatican City over 4.7 times and fill the entire state of Monaco. In comparison, Walmart would fill over a quarter of Venice and has the potential to fill Vatican city thousands of times over. In fact, our research showed that, with approximately 10,526 retail units, Walmart takes up more space than both Apple and Amazon combined. For comparison, if all the land which Walmart owns was laid out, it would take up half of Wales, at 1.11 billion square feet of land. When looking into social media companies, we saw Facebook ranking in 9th place with approximately 40.3 million sq foot of space. Facebook could fill Monaco 1.8 times, making it larger than Johnson and Johnson, and Taiwan Semiconductor, combined.
| Percentage of the country which this company could fill | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Vatican City | Monaco | Maldives | Singapore |
| Walmart | 23558.44% | 5131.54% | 34.55% | 14.41% |
| Apple | 7645.47% | 1665.35% | 11.21% | 4.68% |
| Amazon | 6080.93% | 1324.56% | 8.92% | 3.72% |
| LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton | 4806.39% | 1046.94% | 7.05% | 2.94% |
| Alphabet | 2956.01% | 643.88% | 4.34% | 1.81% |
| JPMorgan Chase | 2527.38% | 550.52% | 3.71% | 1.55% |
| Alibaba Group | 1175.00% | 255.94% | 1.72% | 0.72% |
| Microsoft | 1088.79% | 237.16% | 1.60% | 0.67% |
| Samsung Electronics | 854.96% | 186.23% | 1.25% | 0.52% |
| 851.34% | 185.44% | 1.25% | 0.52% | |
| Mastercard | 848.18% | 184.75% | 1.24% | 0.52% |
| Berkshire Hathaway | 769.73% | 167.66% | 1.13% | 0.47% |
| Tencent Holdings | 506.11% | 110.24% | 0.74% | 0.31% |
| Tesla | 479.19% | 104.38% | 0.70% | 0.29% |
| Johnson and Johnson | 380.82% | 82.95% | 0.56% | 0.23% |
| NVIDIA | 151.59% | 33.02% | 0.22% | 0.09% |
| Taiwan Semiconductor | 16.51% | 3.60% | 0.02% | 0.01% |
Despite experiencing a crash during the pandemic, the world’s biggest companies have seen a strong recovery and many have continued to expand their office spaces, retail stores and factories. While some have reduced their global footprint as employees shift to remote working, others have taken the decision to expand their building space.
With Microsoft holding enough land to fill Monaco twice over, and Walmart able to cover half of Wales, these companies hold a significant amount of space across the globe. We are predicting this growth to continue as companies like Amazon and Apple continue to expand and invest in additional property.
We also worked out the market capitalisation per square foot of each of the most successful companies to work out which business holds the most value in space.
The results showed Taiwan Semiconductor is the most successful company by market capitalisation per square foot, with approximately $713,683 per unit. In second place is NVIDIA, with 58 offices, where the company boasts $555,170 per square foot.
At the other end of the spectrum are LVMH and Walmart. LVMH is in 16th place and Walmart is in last, with over 1.1 billion square feet of land, and a market capitalisation of £355 per sq ft.
| Company | Market capitalisation per sq ft |
|---|---|
| Taiwan Semiconductor | $713,682.86 |
| NVIDIA | $55,170.74 |
| Microsoft | $38,137.22 |
| Tencent Holdings | $32,282.02 |
| Tesla | $31,288.83 |
| Johnson and Johnson | $23,680.43 |
| $21,589.45 | |
| Berkshire Hathaway | $17,127.83 |
| Samsung Electronics | $12,607.40 |
| Alibaba Group | $11,815.04 |
| Alphabet | $10,992.14 |
| Mastercard | $9,549.18 |
| Apple | $6,220.13 |
| Amazon | $5,943.75 |
| JPMorgan Chase | $3,883.04 |
| LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton | $1,670.65 |
| Walmart | $355.01 |
We based our research on the top 20 companies with the largest market capitalisation in 2021, in billions. We looked at their office spaces, retail outlets, factories and any other building space, allowing us to rank these companies for how much space they hold in the world, in comparison to countries.
We worked out the overall office space for each company by taking the square footage for one office to calculate an estimate of that company’s overall office space in square feet.
