(Bloomberg) -- It seems like only yesterday equity investors had pegged $1 trillion as the dividing line between run-of-the-mill large cap companies and freakishly huge ones. Saudi Aramco just took things to a whole new level.
The oil producer's initial public offering Thursday valued the company at $1.7 trillion. That may have trailed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's hoped-for $2 trillion valuation, but it gives the Saudi Arabian behemoth about a $600 billion lead on Apple Inc. and Microsoft Inc., the only two other companies in the world worth more than $1 trillion.
The race to $1 trillion had become something of a spectator sport in recent years as technology megacaps led the record-long bull market in U.S. stocks. Amazon.com Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. have also been in the running, although neither passed the milestone.
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Saudi Aramco's debut would mark the first time in a decade that the world's largest publicly traded company is outside the U.S. In 2009, Exxon Mobil Corp. lost the title to PetroChina Co.
--With assistance from Lu Wang.
To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Richtmyer in New York at rrichtmyer@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net, Lu Wang, Brendan Walsh
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