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Looks like there’s more to those rain-soaked, coffee-swilling, hemp-loving, Birkenstock-wearing, left-of-center-leaning, alt-music scenesters in Seattle than, well, all that stuff we just listed. Turns out Seattle’s tech scene is pretty hardcore, too.
Yeah, yeah, we knew that, right? Still, investors have offered their own sort of benediction by making two Seattle companies the most valuable on the planet.
Amazon popped into the top slot on Monday for the first time, passing local hero Microsoft. Amazon closed up 3.4 percent at $1,629.51 per share, for a market capitalization of $796.78 billion. A resurgent Microsoft closed the day roughly flat at $783.57 billion.
In fact, these two have held the top spots since January 2, when Amazon first passed Apple. Just in the opposite order.
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Microsoft’s journey has been remarkable, as it passed former kingpin Apple back in November. The latter had become the world’s first trillion-dollar company last summer, only to hit a wall as iPhone sales, particularly in China, fell flat last quarter.
Apple is now worth merely $701.99 billion, lagging behind Google-parent Alphabet, which stood at $745.63 billion.
Amazon’s victory is bittersweet. It wears the crown, even though its own stock tanked 25 percent in the last quarter. Amazon had become the second trillion-dollar company in September.
Of course, this game of market cap musical chairs isn’t likely to diminish the fact that each of these companies remains dominant in their various sectors — or the ongoing fear that they will continue to disrupt other industries worldwide.
But, for a moment at least, Seattle can enjoy some bragging rights over Silicon Valley.
