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Companies listed on the Nasdaq

  • MicrosoftBill Gates claimed he had a working BASIC program before he had written any of it.
  • Paramount SkydanceParamount Skydance Corporation, which does business simply as Paramount, was formed on the 7th of August 2025. David Ellison created it by merging three entities: Paramount Global, National Amusements, and Skydance Media. Its shares trade…
  • Talen EnergyTalen Energy filed for bankruptcy in May 2022, aiming to cut $4.5 billion of debt. Its creditors became owners.
  • ComcastComcast began as a small cable operator in Tupelo, Mississippi. It had five channels and 12,000 customers in 1963.
  • Marriott InternationalMarriott International began as a root beer stand in Washington, D.C. in 1927.
  • Alphabet Inc.Alphabet's structure was modeled on Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
  • StarbucksStarbucks Corporation had 35,711 stores in 80 countries, and 15,873 of them were in the United States. Of the American stores, more than 8,900 are run by the company itself. The rest are licensed to other operators. As of 2022 it ranked…
  • Mondelez InternationalMondelez International takes its name from two scraps of language. One is the Latin word mundus, meaning world. The other is delez, a shortened echo of the word delicious. The company writes its name with a macron over the second e, and it…
  • Meta PlatformsMark Zuckerberg announced on October 28, 2021 that Facebook was changing its name to Meta Platforms.
  • PepsiCoPepsiCo sells its products across more than 200 countries and territories. As of January 2021-23 of its brands each brought in over 1 billion dollars a year. Only Nestlé ranks ahead of it among the world's food and beverage businesses. Yet…
  • Apple Inc.Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus to help start Apple. Steve Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator to fund a circuit board.
  • HasbroHasbro began in 1923 by selling textile remnants in Providence. Three immigrant brothers started it.
  • Amazon (company)Amazon started in a converted garage under the name Cadabra. Jeff Bezos began the online bookstore there in 1994.
  • AmgenThe name AMGen is shorthand for Applied Molecular Genetics, the label the company carried when it was founded in Thousand Oaks, California, in April 1980. The shortened name stuck, even though the original one described a science project…
  • Warner Music GroupWarner Music Group began because a Warner Bros. actor made money for a rival.
  • Domino'sIn 1960, brothers Tom and Jim Monaghan took over a small pizza shop at 507 Cross Street in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It stood near Eastern Michigan University, and it was called DomiNick's. A $500 down payment sealed the deal, and the brothers…
  • DraftKingsIn 2017 the government moved to block DraftKings and FanDuel from merging. The two companies then called off the deal.
  • DoorDashDoorDash began as a Stanford student website called PaloAltoDelivery.com. It launched in January 2013.
  • ExelonExelon and Illinois officials waited four years to disclose radioactive water spills at Braidwood nuclear plant.
  • AMDAMD named its K5 chip after Kryptonite, the only substance that could harm Superman.
  • BaiduBaidu's name comes from the last line of a Song dynasty poem. It describes finding someone in dim candlelight.
  • CoinbaseCrypto exchange Coinbase dropped its headquarters in May 2020 and went fully remote.
  • IntelIntel almost called itself "Moore Noyce," which sounds like "more noise."
  • AirbnbAirbnb began with an air mattress in a San Francisco living room. Roommates short on rent hosted guests in 2007.
  • NetEaseNetEase is a Chinese internet company whose web address, 163.com, is a leftover from the dial-up era. Before broadband arrived, Chinese internet users had to dial 163 to get online. The number later became tied to the company's name. Ding…
  • Ziff DavisZiff Davis began in 1920 as an ad agency placing ads in African American weekly newspapers.
  • Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts, which once put its programmers in full-page ads, agreed in 2025 to a $55 billion buyout.
  • Take-Two InteractiveTake-Two Interactive began with a 21-year-old chief executive and a calculation about age. Its founder, Ryan Brant, explained his reasoning in his own words: "I wanted to get into a business where I could raise capital as a younger guy. In…
  • BilibiliBilibili began in 2009 as a fan shrine for the anime character Hatsune Miku. It was first named Mikufans.cn.
  • PalantirPalantir Technologies takes its name from a "seeing stone" in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium: a crystal orb through which distant events could be observed, and power exercised. Peter Thiel chose that name deliberately in 2003, when he and…
  • Scholastic CorporationScholastic began as a four-page magazine handed out in 50 high schools near Pittsburgh.

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