Inside the Data Boom: Top 10 Most Valuable Data Companies in the World Today
It has been said over and over: Data is the new oil. It is the gold of this digital age.
Well, it appears we now have undeniable proof.
That’s because some of the world’s most valuable companies are data companies—amassing hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in valuation through the years as this list will show. It is a list Data & Storage ASEAN made using available data from a variety of sources, including Insider Monkey and Yahoo! Finance, among others.
But that begs the question: What is a data company anyway?
In a vacuum, a data company is mainly focused on collecting, managing, analysing, and using—yes, that is correct!—data. These companies generally handle copious amounts of data and use a variety of technologies to glean meaningful insights for a multitude of purposes, including but not limited to marketing, advertising, and innovation.
Even so, it is important to note that a data company, while focused on leveraging data, is not necessarily limited to that alone. Instead, as this list will also show, the biggest data companies tend to offer different technological solutions as well—often with the end goal of helping other businesses make sense of their data and maximise it.
This is why this list is populated by so-called tech titans that are likely familiar to you already. So, without further ado, here are the top 10 data companies in the world based on market capitalisation.
10. VMware (USD $61.52 billion)
A pioneer and leader in virtualisation, VMware has evolved into a multi-cloud services provider that enables enterprises to digitally transform and innovate at an accelerated pace. It has also grown its storage portfolio and is being used across different industries across all verticals—including public service, financial services, and healthcare.
9. Snowflake Inc. (USD $61.753 billion)
Snowflake Inc. is known as a data cloud company offering storage and analytics services through a Data-as-a-Service model. Founded only in 2012, it was built from the ground up to specifically harness the immense power of the cloud. Today, its Data Cloud platform provides numerous companies worldwide seamless access to explore, share, and unlock the true value of their data.
8. International Business Machines Corporation (USD $151.436 billion)
This group’s older brother so to speak, IBM has managed to fight off what was once a years-long decline to become one of the world’s most valuable data companies. Solely a manufacturer of computing machines once upon a time, IBM has diversified over the years, so much so that it is now a major player in Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and more—and with data centres all around the world.
7. SAP SE (USD $183.175 billion)
Germany’s SAP SE is among the most popular enterprise software developers today and is arguably the foremost vendor of enterprise resource planning solutions. It is also a major player in big data, providing database software and technology via SAP HANA and the award-winning S/4HANA Cloud. Trusted by top companies like Nestle and Pfizer, SAP has also gotten into AI and is, in fact, collaborating with IBM
6. Accenture plc (USD $221.642 billion)
Generally known in tech circles as an IT company, Accenture boasts a comprehensive suite of professional services that cover digital, cloud, and security. It also offers a powerful analytics platform via Accenture Song and several as-a-service solutions that include business outsourcing, cloud computing, and managed services aimed at improving enterprise decision-making.
5. Salesforce, Inc. (USD $259.927 billion)
A direct competitor of SAP, Salesforce, Inc. was the world’s largest enterprise apps vendor in 2022—overtaking SAP that year. Focused on providing cloud-based customer relation management software, Salesforce also offers a comprehensive, AI-driven analytics platform that enables its customers to make the most out of their data and use it for information-backed decision-making.
4. Oracle Corporation (USD $291.509 billion)
Oracle Corporation is among the largest technology companies in the world, offering comprehensive cloud services and enterprise software solutions. Oracle continues to be a tech leader, even in big data with its Big Three of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Flow, Oracle Big Data Service, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Catalog. Its Oracle Autonomous Database is also a game-changer, notching the highest score for the fourth straight time in All Use Cases in the Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud Database Management Systems for Operational Use Cases research.
3. Amazon.com, Inc. (USD $1.576 trillion)
Known primarily as an e-commerce platform, Amazon Incorporation has over the years evolved into a multinational technology company—so much so that its subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, is now among the leaders in enterprise computing. It is also making waves with its big data solutions, including the Hadoop-based Elastic MapReduce (EMR) and a new AI-driven capability that will supercharge queries for Amazon’s millions of clients.
2. Alphabet Inc. – Google (USD $1.786 trillion)
Data has long been the backbone of one of the world’s biggest tech conglomerates, Alphabet Inc. It is, of course, the parent company of Google, which is arguably still the biggest search engine of all. And that alone requires copious amounts of data to maintain. So, it is not surprising that Google is right at the very top of this list, especially with its cloud-based data services (via the Google Cloud Platform) that include data storage and machine learning-enabled data analytics that help clients make the most out of their data.
1. Microsoft Corporation (USD $2.893 trillion)
The father of the ubiquitous Windows OS, Microsoft is in this rarefied list largely due to its Azure Platform, whose services include cloud computing, data storage, and, yes, data analytics. In fact, Microsoft also boasts widely used and highly regarded data analytics platforms like Microsoft Business Intelligence, which turn unstructured data into easy-to-grasp insights, and Microsoft Fabric, the company’s AI-driven analytics platform that unites data and services into one pane of glass.
Aside from being the most valuable, the companies in this list are also innovators. They push the limits of tech, advancing it forward one innovation—or two—at a time. This means the tech monoliths here are likely to stay in their lofty positions as the most valuable data companies in the world for the time being and moving forward.
Only recently, Microsoft Corporation has signed a 10-year with Vodafone “to bring generative AI, digital services and the cloud to more than 300 million businesses and consumers.”
