Technology Value Observatory
Publicly listed tech has grown from under 10% of global stock-market value to around a third — in just over a decade.
all other sectors combined
The Engine of Value
Technology creates more value than any other sector in human history. The Technology Value Observatory tracks, quantifies, and explains how much value the technology sector generates in public markets — and how that value evolves over time.
Every month, we update a single dataset: the total market capitalization of all publicly listed technology companies globally. Our goal is simple: to make visible what investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers already sense — that innovation compounds faster than any other economic force.
Over the past decade, publicly listed tech stocks globally have grown more than six times faster than all other sectors combined. The portion of global market value held by technology companies has grown from under 10% in 2015 to about 33% in mid-2026.
Source: TVO Growth Multiplier and Tech vs all other sectors views, computed from the dataset described in the Methodology section.
If you had bet on tech...
Imagine you put money into the global tech sector. How much would you have today?
Would be worth today
Multiplier derived from the change in total global tech-sector market capitalization between the selected start month and the latest available month, using the TVO dataset. Indicative — does not account for dividends, dilution, fees, or taxes.
Hover the chart — the numbers tell the story
How many times faster has tech grown compared to every other sector? (6-month moving average)
Loading chart data...
... is hard to picture.
The global tech sector is now worth more than every ounce of gold ever mined, about what the entire world spends on defence in 18 years, and 14 times the combined value of every cryptocurrency on Earth.
Sum of all publicly listed tech companies, today
Every coin and token, at recent prices
Tech is 14.7× this
Every country’s defence budget, one year (2023)
Tech is 18.0× this
≈ 222,600 tonnes above ground, end-Q2 2026
Tech is 1.5× this
Every non-tech listed company on Earth, combined
2.6× larger than tech
Sources
- [1]TVO dataset — see Methodology section below
- [2]CoinGecko, Global Cryptocurrency Market Cap (live)
- [3]SIPRI Fact Sheet, Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023 (US$2,443 bn in 2023)
- [4]World Gold Council, How much gold has been mined? (total above-ground stock, end-Q2 2026: 222,600 tonnes, US$29.0tn)
Why this is not just a chart
A number this large stops being a number.
When a single sector pulls ahead of every other by this much, it stops being a stock-market story. It becomes the story behind the others.
It funds the wars that are fought with drones and satellites. It tilts the elections in countries where its platforms decide what people see. It moves the jobs — which ones disappear, which ones are created, which ones pay. It strains the currencies of nations that have to buy its products and pay its cloud bills in dollars.
Tech's rise is not a sidebar to the news. For better and worse, it is increasingly the engine underneath it.
Editorial interpretation of the underlying data. For the figures behind the argument, see the data section and the methodology.
Four ways to feel it
You don’t have to own a single share for this to be about you.
As a citizen
The rules of public life are being written in private code.
The platforms where you read the news, find work, and form opinions are owned by a handful of companies whose value now rivals entire nations. The choices their engineers make at lunchtime end up in your feed by dinner. Knowing how big this slice is changes which laws, taxes, and regulations you can demand from the people you elect.
As a worker
Your industry is being repriced — whether or not it sells software.
Every sector is being squeezed or supercharged by tech: logistics, medicine, finance, design, education, even the trades. Wages, hiring, and which skills compound over a career are all downstream of this shift. The question isn’t whether tech touches your job; it’s how soon, and whether you’re on the side that benefits or the side that pays for it.
As an investor
The default index is no longer balanced — it is a bet on tech.
On the TVO dataset, the tech sector is now roughly a third of total global listed market cap — up from under 10% a decade ago. That can be exhilarating on the way up and brutal on the way down. Understanding this exposure — and the correlations, currencies, and concentration inside it — matters more than picking the next winner.
Source: TVO Tech vs all other sectors viewAs a geopolitical observer
Power between countries is increasingly measured in chips and code.
Semiconductors, data centres, satellites, and frontier AI models are the new oil, steel, and rail — they decide which countries can defend themselves, set the rules, and project influence. Export controls and trade fights are no longer about commodities; they are about who controls each layer of the technology stack. The TVO map of where tech value sits — overwhelmingly the United States, with China second — is also a map of the next decade of statecraft.
Source: TVO Regional Breakdown viewObserve – Think – Act (OTA)
The Global Tech Value Tracker is built around a simple discipline called Observe – Think – Act (OTA).
Observe
Continuously and honestly observe reality as it is — using data, not narratives. In this case: how global technology value actually evolves over time.
Think
Analyze what those observations imply, including second-order effects. Value creation shapes capital flows, power, dependency, and long-term strategic options.
Act
Make deliberate decisions — as an investor, leader, or policymaker — while recognizing that actions themselves generate new observations.
OTA is not a linear process. Observation, thinking, and action reinforce each other continuously. This tracker strengthens the observe muscle. Its value depends on how thoughtfully people think — and how responsibly they act.
The book
Observe, Think, Act: Strategic Leadership in the Age of AI
The full OTA framework — the loop, the five modalities, and the evidence from 200 scored cases of organisational success and failure — with the complete OTA-200 Study free to read online.
Explore ota-book.com
Nordic Business Forum
The ideas behind the Global Tech Value Tracker were discussed in my keynote at Nordic Business Forum, where I argue that technology has become the world's primary engine of value creation — and that many economic and geopolitical developments are better understood as consequences of this shift.
The section most directly related to this tracker is between 9:18 and 14:00.
Watch the keynote on YouTubeFirst Fellow
At First Fellow, we invest in young technology companies because I believe technology is the only force capable of helping humankind solve its own most serious challenges.
I have been a technology entrepreneur all my life, and First Fellow is a way to support the next generation of founders building meaningful companies.
Data Source and Methodology
Data Source
Financial data for this analysis was sourced from Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) APIs. The dataset is updated continuously as new data becomes available, roughly on a monthly basis. It encompasses 20 years (2005–present) of monthly market capitalization data for publicly traded companies in the Technology and Communication sectors across four major global regions: United States, Europe, China, and Rest of Asia.
Sector Classification
Technology sector companies were included in their entirety, while Communication sector analysis was refined to focus on Internet Content & Information and Electronic Gaming & Multimedia subsectors, as classified by FMP's sector taxonomy.
Additionally, the following companies were included in our analysis despite being classified by FMP as Consumer Cyclical, as we believe they operate as major technology platforms and their inclusion better represents the true scope of the global tech sector:
- Alibaba
- Amazon
- Netflix
Geographic Coverage
Analysis covers major stock exchanges within each defined region, providing comprehensive representation of publicly traded technology and communication companies in the specified markets.
Data Collection Process
Company identification was conducted through FMP's stock screener API across all major exchanges within each region. Company profiles were retrieved via FMP's company profile API to obtain ISIN codes, which were then cross-referenced through FMP's ISIN API to identify all global listings for each entity. Monthly historical market capitalization data was collected using FMP's historical market cap API, with a secondary collection pass using the closest valid date to the start of the month to account for banking holidays and trading suspensions.
Data Processing and Quality Control
- Deduplication was performed to ensure single representation per company, prioritizing home market listings or highest trading volume listings where home market data was unavailable.
- All market capitalizations were standardized to USD using daily foreign exchange rates from FMP's forex EOD API.
- Anomaly detection was implemented using statistical methods (Z-score analysis and Isolation Forest algorithms) supplemented by AI-assisted analysis.
- Manual verification and correction was performed on the top 50 companies by market capitalization each month, representing the majority of total sector market capitalization.
- Only clear data anomalies (magnitude errors, formatting issues, and verified incorrect data points) were corrected to maintain data integrity.
Key Definitions
- Market capitalization — share price × shares outstanding, expressed in USD. Reflects investor valuation, not revenue, profit, or assets.
- Growth multiplier (absolute) — (tech market cap at end of window) ÷ (tech market cap at start of window), divided by the same ratio for all other listed companies. A value of n means tech multiplied by n times more than the rest of the market.
- Growth multiplier (relative) — percentage change in tech ÷ percentage change in all other listed companies, over the same window.
- 6-month moving average (SMA) — the trailing six-month mean of the multiplier, used to suppress monthly volatility without smoothing away inflection points.
- CAGR forecast — projections in the 5-year forecast use the compound annual growth rate of the most recent 24 months, capped to ±2–3% per month to keep projections within a reasonable envelope.
Limitations
- Public companies only. Large privately held technology companies (OpenAI, SpaceX, ByteDance, Stripe, Databricks, and others) are not represented in this dataset. Their inclusion would meaningfully raise estimated tech sector value.
- Sector boundaries are not bright lines. Classification follows FMP's taxonomy supplemented by manual additions; small differences in definition can shift the tech share by several percentage points. Compare across providers (MSCI, GICS, ICB) before drawing conclusions.
- USD-denominated. Cross-border comparisons embed USD strength or weakness; a depreciating local currency can mask local-currency outperformance.
- No survivorship correction. Delisted companies leave the time series; the cumulative tech-sector return implied by this dataset is therefore a slight underestimate of an investor's experience holding a static index.
- External comparison figures (Scale Check) — gold, real estate, military spending, cryptocurrency — are widely cited estimates at point-in-time and should be read as orders of magnitude rather than precise decimals.
- Personal Calculator projects forward using sector market-cap growth, not an investable index. It ignores dividends, dilution from new issuance, fees, and taxes, and should not be read as a backtest of any specific portfolio.
How to cite
If you reference this tracker in research, reporting, or teaching, please cite it as: