Skip to content
Curated category

Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange

  • 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…
  • BPBP p.l.c. began not as an oil giant but as a gamble on a remote patch of Persian ground. In May 1908, a group of British geologists struck oil at Masjed…
  • Wiley (publisher)Charles Wiley opened a print shop in Manhattan in 1807. The small business published works by James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving during the…
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • SpotifySpotify began not with a boardroom strategy but with a misheard word. When Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon were choosing a name for their new company…
  • AB InBevAB InBev, formally Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, holds the title of the largest brewer in the world, a position built not through slow organic growth but…
  • UnileverUnilever, the British multinational headquartered in London, sells its products in over 190 countries and holds the distinction of being the largest producer…
  • General MotorsGeneral Motors held the title of largest automaker in the world for 77 years before losing it to Toyota in 2008. That reign began in 1931, when GM overtook…
  • 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…
  • Morgan StanleyThe firm formally opened its doors for business on the 16th of September 1935, at 2 Wall Street in New York City. This specific date marked the birth of…
  • Bank of AmericaBank of America began not in a gleaming tower but in a converted storefront in San Francisco, where on the 17th of October 1904, a man named Amadeo Giannini…
  • FedExFedEx began with a term paper. Frederick W. Smith, a student at Yale University, sketched out the concept for a delivery system built specifically for urgent…
  • StubHubEric Baker stood in a theater line, unable to buy tickets for The Lion King on Broadway. He needed a way to find secondhand seats without paying inflated…
  • RedditReddit launched in June 2005 with a problem its founders could not admit to anyone: the site was empty. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, two roommates fresh…
  • Alibaba GroupAlibaba Group was founded on the 28th of June 1999, not in a gleaming office tower, but in a Hangzhou apartment. Jack Ma gathered 17 friends and students…
  • MastercardMastercard began not as a corporation but as a defensive alliance. In 1966, Karl H. Hinke, an executive vice president at Marine Midland Bank, summoned…
  • Bristol Myers SquibbIn 1858, Edward Robinson Squibb opened a small laboratory in Brooklyn, New York. He began selling pure medical supplies to doctors who demanded higher…
  • ValvolineValvoline began not in a garage or a factory, but in a doctor's bag. In the early 1860s, Dr. John Ellis, a Massachusetts-born physician, traveled to…
  • IBMIBM, formally the International Business Machines Corporation, was born in Endicott, New York, on the 16th of June 1911, when a financier named Charles…
  • BakktIn August 2018, Intercontinental Exchange formed Bakkt in partnership with Boston Consulting Group. The alliance also included Microsoft and Starbucks among…
  • 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…
  • Wyndham Hotels & ResortsThe year 1990 marked the founding of Hospitality Franchise Systems, a company created specifically to acquire hotel franchises.
  • CourseraStanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller launched Coursera in 2012. They had begun offering their own Stanford courses…
  • GameStopGameStop was founded in Dallas in 1984 as Babbage's, a software retailer named after the 19th-century computing pioneer Charles Babbage.
  • BlackRockBlackRock, Inc. manages $12.5 trillion in assets as of 2025 , a sum larger than the entire economy of any country except the United States and China.
  • MGM Resorts InternationalMGM Resorts International began its life not as a hotel company, but as a naming rights shell. In 1986, after selling off his two Nevada casino-hotels to…
  • Quanta ServicesQuanta Services sits beneath almost every major wire strung across the American sky. From the high-voltage lines that carry wind power out of New Mexico to…
  • Southern CompanySouthern Company sits behind the light switches and gas stoves of 9 million households across six states, making it the second largest utility company in the…
  • Snowflake Inc.In July 2012, three men stood in San Mateo, California to launch a new company. Benoît Dageville and Thierry Cruanes had spent years as data architects at…
  • Ford Motor CompanyFord Motor Company was incorporated on the 16th of June 1903, with $28,000 in cash from twelve investors, launched in a converted factory in Detroit.
  • General DynamicsIsaac Leopold Rice bought the Holland Torpedo Boat Company from John Philip Holland in 1899. This transaction marked the beginning of what would become a…
  • SonySony began in the rubble of postwar Tokyo with a capital of 190,000 yen and eight employees. Masaru Ibuka opened an electronics shop inside a department…
  • 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…
  • CencoraCencora handles roughly 20 percent of all pharmaceuticals sold and distributed across the United States. That is not a footnote.
  • DiageoOn the 17th of December 1997, shares in a new company named Diageo began trading on the London Stock Exchange. This event marked the end of two separate…
  • Occidental PetroleumLos Angeles, 1920 marked the birth of Occidental Petroleum. Armand Hammer took control in 1957 and steered the company through a decade of rapid growth.
  • GlobantMartín Migoya, Guibert Englebienne, Martín Umaran and Néstor Nocetti launched Globant in 2003. They established the company within the streets of Buenos…
  • NRG EnergyNRG Energy began its life in 1989 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Northern States Power Company. This parent utility later became Xcel Energy, but the split…
  • Public Service Enterprise GroupPublic Service Enterprise Group, better known as PSEG, began not in 1985 when it was formally incorporated, but in 1903, when a single company absorbed more…
  • Townsquare MediaTownsquare Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the 1st of March 2010 with $211.3 million in debt and just $166.5 million in assets.
  • Oaktree Capital ManagementIn 1995, a group of former TCW Group principals established Oaktree Capital Management in Los Angeles. Within three months of that founding, more than 30 TCW…
  • Brunswick CorporationJ. M. Brunswick arrived in the United States from Switzerland at age 15. He opened his machine shop on the 15th of September 1845, in Cincinnati, Ohio.