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Companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average

  • MicrosoftThe January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics put a microcomputer called the Altair 8800 on its cover, and two childhood friends saw an opening.
  • McDonald'sMcDonald's opened its first location at 1398 North E Street in San Bernardino, California, on the 15th of May 1940 - not as a global empire, but as a…
  • Nike, Inc.Nike, Inc. began not in a boardroom but out of the trunk of a car. Phil Knight, a University of Oregon track athlete, and his coach Bill Bowerman started…
  • The Walt Disney CompanyThe Walt Disney Company began not as an empire but as a $1,500 contract. In 1923, a young animator named Walt Disney signed a deal with New York film…
  • JPMorgan ChaseJPMorgan Chase traces its roots to a political maneuver so brazen it would be called corruption today. In 1799, Aaron Burr wanted to found a bank in New York…
  • WalmartWalmart operates in 20 countries and employs 2.1 million people, making it the largest private employer on earth. In February 2026, it became the first…
  • VerizonVerizon Communications today carries more wireless subscribers than any other carrier in the United States, a number that stood at 146.8 million as of the…
  • Goldman SachsGoldman Sachs began in a one-room basement office next to a coal chute in New York City in 1869. That is the unglamorous origin of a firm that would one day…
  • Apple Inc.Apple Inc. started with two men selling everything they owned. Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus. Steve Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator.
  • Amazon (company)Amazon began, on the 5th of July 1994, in the converted garage of a house in Bellevue, Washington, under a name most people have never heard: Cadabra.
  • AmgenIn April 1980, a small group of venture capitalists gathered in Thousand Oaks to establish Applied Molecular Genetics. This entity would soon change its name…
  • IBMIBM, formally the International Business Machines Corporation, was born in Endicott, New York, on the 16th of June 1911, when a financier named Charles…
  • NvidiaNvidia was founded at a Denny's roadside diner on Berryessa Road in East San Jose, where three engineers sat down in late 1992 and agreed to build a company…
  • Home DepotHome Depot opened its first two stores on the 22nd of June 1979, in leased spaces in metro Atlanta that had previously housed Treasure Island hypermarket…
  • The Coca-Cola CompanyThe Coca-Cola Company was born from a personal crisis. In May 1886, a pharmacist named John Stith Pemberton was searching for a way out of a morphine…
  • Visa Inc.Visa Inc. processes more transactions in a single year than most people could count in a lifetime. In 2025, its global network handled 257.5 billion…