The world's most valuable public company just made more history.

Apple Inc. shares rose 0.8% Wednesday to close at a new all-time high of $176.24, giving the iPhone maker a market value of $904.9 billion.

That makes Apple the first U.S. company to reach the $900 billion threshold, having already become the first to hit $800 billion when it accomplished the feat in May. It now needs to grow its market capitalization by just 11% to become the first to be worth $1 trillion. Based on Apple's share count as of Oct. 20, that would mean a share price of $194.77.

The milestone comes shortly after Apple's latest update to the iPhone hit stores last week. Shares also got a boost after the tech giant delivered its best quarterly growth in two years, fueled by strong sales in all of its key products and a rebound in the critical China market.

Positive reviews of the firm's 10th-anniversary line of iPhones have generally boosted Apple shares recently. For the year, they are up more than 50%, part of this year's torrid rally for the biggest technology firms.


For comparison, the Journal's Market Data Group found that Apple's market value exceeds the combined market values of more than 100 of the smallest companies in the S&P 500 and gross domestic products of more than 90% of the 192 countries tracked by the World Bank.

Apple's $900 billion record is the latest round-number milestone for large technology companies this year. Google parent Alphabet Inc. recently joined Apple as the only U.S. companies to reach $700 billion in market value since 2000, and maybe ever, according to the Journal's Market Data Group.

Meantime, Microsoft Corp. eclipsed its dot-com era market cap of $600 billion and is now trading above $650 billion. Earlier this year, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. passed $500 billion. The five technology and internet giants are the largest S&P 500 companies by market value.

Now, the question is whether Apple can continue rising and threaten $1 trillion.


This year rivals 2012 as one of the best in the company's history and is the second time Apple has reached multiple $100-billion milestones in the same year. After taking nearly three decades to grow to $100 billion, Apple has gone from $100 billion to $900 billion in just over 10 years.