Who will be the next giant at a thousand billion?

These companies have not become giants to more than $ 1,000 billion in market capitalization per chance. They conquered colossal markets, laid unrivaled technological milestones, generated extraordinary margins and consolidated quasi-monopoly positions. Each embodies a rare convergence of long-term vision, powerful network effects, operational efficiency and successful horizontal expansion. Identifying the next company that will cross this symbolic milestone of 1000 billion capitalization is to identify a company capable of becoming an essential digital infrastructure, imposing a global technological platform, and of permanently capturing value via significant competitive advantages.

Detection criteria

A future member of the club of the 1000 billion market capitalization must:

• Send a global scalable and high expansion market
• Create a technological platform or standard
• Hold a differentiating intellectual property
• Rely on data as a lever for efficiency
• Demonstrate growing profitability with capital discipline
• Benefit from visionary and ethical management
• Become the default choice of its sector

Among the Eleven contenders that I identified, here are the first five :

Crowdstrike: the digital defender facing the fire test

With a capitalization of $ 110 billion, Crowdstrike leads the contenders. Its flagship product, the Falcon platform, combines protection, detection and response to cybermenaces, in a resolutely modular and cloud-native SaaS model.

Its target market – cybersecurity – is not only growing: it has become vital, systemic, universal. The company today addresses more than half of fortune 500. It dominates its sector on the technological level, claims gross margins higher than those of Microsoft, and displays spectacular customer retention. It capitalizes on behavioral data to refine its models, and aims to build a more global “digital confidence” platform than the simple security of the terminals.

But Crowstrike remains fragile. The major incident of July 2024 (defective update having paralyzed part of the global web) highlighted the systemic risk of its centrality. His capital discipline is also subject to question, with remuneration in stock options deemed disproportionate. To hope to reach the trillion, Crowstrike will have to demonstrate organizational robustness and strategic diversification worthy of its technological scope.

• ✔️ Scalable global market
• ✔️ Technological platform
• ✔️ Data exploitation
• ✔️ Recurrence and expansion
• ⚠️ Perfectible governance
• ⚠️ Risk of technological concentration

Applovin: King of the advertising world algorithm

Few companies display such a contrast between public notoriety and stock market performance. Capitalized at nearly $ 128 billion, Applovin has become the hidden nugget of the Adtech. Part of the mobile gaming, it has turned into an algorithmic advertising monetization center, with Axon 2.0 for brain and the max platform as a playground.

Applovin combines a model of rare efficiency (2.2 billion FCF for only 500 employees), a massive user base (1.4 billion AU) and an almost military execution capacity. Its radical technical culture, its strategic refocusing (sale of its game studios) and its capital sobriety make it a UFO in the tech universe.

Its market is colossal-nearly $ 1,000 billion in digital advertising expenses expected by 2028-and its ability to extend to it, especially towards connected TV and e-commerce, seems limitless. If she succeeds in making herself unavoidable outside the closed gardens of Apple and Google (Alphabet), it could become the advertising standard of the AI era.

• ✔️ Extensible market
• ✔️ IA Scalable platform
• ✔️ Radical product culture
• ✔️ Outstanding profitability
• ✔️ Visionary leadership
• ⚠️ dependence on mobile ecosystems
• ⚠️ cyclicity of the pub market

Palo Alto Networks: the spine of global cybersecurity

At 113 billion dollars in capitalization, Palo Alto Networks embodies the perfect metamorphosis of a Legacy publisher in a cloud safety platform. Its tripartite suite-Strata (new generation firewalls), Prisma Cloud (Cloud-Native Safety) and Cortex XSIAM (SOC automated by IA)-forms a coherent ecosystem, massively adopted by large companies.

The market addressed is gigantic: global digitalization only makes sense if it is secure. Panw wants to be the guarantor. Its M&A strategy is offensive (buyout of Cyberark for $ 25 billion), its profitability has gone (+3 MD $ FCF) and its “Default Choice” position for corporate cloud safety is strengthening.

But flaws emerge: slowdown in organic growth, risky integration of multiple acquisitions, sales of management by management. The potential is real, but will depend on the ability to orchestrate the whole without losing consistency at all.

• ✔️ Structural market carrier
• ✔️ Integrated cloud platform
• ✔️ Massive behavioral data
• ✔️ Solid profitability
• ⚠️ Stack of assets to digest
• ⚠️ Recommended prudent governance

Snowflake: the uncertain backpack of the Cloud Data

Snowflake remains a fascinating case. With a capitalization of $ 68 billion, the former Nasdaq Chouchou is trying to be reborn in the pivot platform of the corporate AI. Its unique, multi-cloud, extensible and secure architecture makes it a potential bone of global data. The AI modules (Cortex, Unistore, Native Apps) testify to a desire to establish itself as the standard.

But financial reality is tough. Operational losses remain high, remuneration in stock options reach critical levels (up to 40 % of turnover), and past governance has seriously started market credibility. The new management – Sridhar Ramaswamy in charge – wants to refocus the long -term innovation trajectory at the cost of short -term sacrifices.

Snowflake COCHE (almost) all the boxes of a giant future. But she still has to convince that she is more than a brilliant product: an essential platform.

• ✔️ Single technological property
• ✔️ Data/AI platform under construction
• ✔️ Explosion market
• ✔️ Solid Enterprise Adoption
• ⚠️ Very uncertain profitability
• ⚠️ Governance to restore
• ⚠️ Ferocious competition (Databricks, Hyperscalers)

Coreweave: the invisible engine of the world AI

With only 53 billion capitalization, Coreweave is perhaps the most explosive nugget of the lot. Pure Player of the IA infrastructure, the company deploys GPU giant clusters to serve the most demanding calculation needs of the planet. It has become the strategic ally of Openai, Meta or Microsoft.

Its economic model-“Take-Or-Pay” contracts, 64 %EBITDA margins, vertical software integration-combines all that GAFAMs love: technological standard, scalability, entrance barrier. Its growth is vertiginous (CA X3 per year), its benchmark technology at the top (MLPERF), and its positioning of hyperspecalized niche shelters it from trivialization.

But the risks are immense: dependence on a few giant customers, needs for constant funding, competitive pressure of generalist hyperscalters. Coreweave can become the “AWS of the AI” (Amazon), but provided that you remain the fastest, the most reliable and the most capitalized.

• ✔️ Infrastructure IA critique
• ✔️ Owner platform
• ✔️ strategic customers
• ✔️ Unrivaled technological performance
• ⚠️ Customer risk concentration
• ⚠️ High debt

The roots of the trillion are already visible

Crowdstrike, Applovin, Palo Alto Networks, Snowflake and Coreweave are not yet GAFAM. But they share the attributes: technological platform, global scalability, data-centricity, monopolistic ambition. Each in its own way embodies an essential vertical of digital: cybersecurity, advertising, cloud data, infrastructure AI. Their accession to the 1,000 billion club will depend less on their technology than their ability to become the strategic evidence in their field. The rest of this series will focus on the other identified challengers.