Research pack · Overview

Every big business on earth, measured

The 2,000 largest listed companies book $52.9 trillion of revenue, a sum equal to 47% of world GDP, and they sit on $91 trillion of market value. Around them are 12,500 more listed firms, 1,442 private unicorns and 60 stock exchanges. This pack puts all of it in one place so you can check a number, see how it is spread and read the caveats before you write.

How big is "big business"?

The world's GDP is the yardstick. Against it we set what the Forbes Global 2000 sold, earned and was worth in 2025.

The top 2,000 public firms sell the equivalent of half the world's output

Forbes Global 2000 totals vs world GDP, US$ trillion

Source: Forbes Global 2000 (2026; revenue and profit are latest fiscal year, market value is a May 2026 snapshot); World Bank, GDP current US$, 2024.

The top 100 firms book 35% of the list's revenue

Cumulative share of the Global 2000 total held by the top N firms. X axis is log scale.

Source: Forbes Global 2000 (2026). Firms ranked separately on each metric; loss-makers count as zero profit.

What the 2,000 actually do

Each box is one company, grouped by sector, and its area is the metric you pick. Hover a box for the company's numbers, or click a sector to zoom in.

Financials book 23.5% of the revenue

Forbes Global 2000 by sector and company, box area = revenue

Source: Forbes Global 2000 (2026), with the 13-sector taxonomy from scripts/taxonomy.py. The 7 largest sectors by revenue get their own colour and the other 6 share grey. Firms with negative profit are left out of the profit view.

Where it sits

One country books 37% of the revenue and 55% of the market value

Share of the Forbes Global 2000 total, top 12 countries

Source: Forbes Global 2000 (2026). Country is where the company is headquartered. Forbes lists Hong Kong and Taiwan separately from China. The Geography page has the full map.

Explore the pack

Each page takes one question. Every chart has hover detail, a data table and a source line.

How to read this pack: data sources and methodology

There are four layers here, each kept on its own ledger. The Forbes list measures revenue, the listed universe measures market value, the unicorn board measures private paper valuation, and the World Bank gives the frame (GDP, workers, the count of listed firms). They cover different companies and different years, so they are never added into one pie.

Every dataset behind the pack

Source, publisher, kind and trust level. Click a column header to sort.

Registry from data_analysis/output/STUDY_PACK.md, Appendix A.

Vintages: which year each number comes from

  • Forbes Global 2000: published June 2026. Revenue, profit and assets are each firm's latest fiscal year (mostly FY2025). Market value is a May 2026 snapshot.
  • Fortune Global 500: published July 2026 (FY2025 revenue).
  • Listed universe: CompaniesMarketCap market caps (scraped 2026) plus SEC XBRL revenue, mostly CY2025.
  • CB Insights unicorns: the valuation at each company's latest round, as of the 2026 scrape.
  • World Bank: GDP, labour force and listed domestic companies, all for 2024.

Coverage: what is and isn't in the pack

  • In: 2,000 public giants with full financials. 90 state-owned, private and mutual giants from the Fortune 500. 12,512 listed firms with market cap, 5,500 of them with audited US revenue. 1,442 unicorns. 60 exchanges with 9,780 listings. 173 AI model builders.
  • Reconciled universe: 17,985 source rows are de-duplicated into 15,175 companies. On 756 rows the sources disagree.
  • Out: small business and the informal economy (the bottom ~95% of firms by count). Most co-operatives. Ownership networks (who owns whom). Listings exchange by exchange beyond the top companies.
  • Country means where a company is domiciled, not who owns it. That is why Bermuda and the Cayman Islands "over-index".