Curated playlist

Multinational companies headquartered in the United States

MicrosoftBill Gates claimed he had a working BASIC program before he had written any of it.
Nike, Inc.A waffle iron inspired the sole of an early Nike running shoe. Coach Bill Bowerman wanted grip without metal spikes.
The Walt Disney CompanyMickey Mouse was almost named Mortimer Mouse. Walt Disney's wife persuaded him to change it.
GoogleGoogle's name is a misspelling of googol, a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The search engine was first nicknamed BackRub.
JPMorgan ChaseJPMorgan Chase began in 1799 as a water company that never laid pipe. Aaron Burr hid a bank clause in its charter.
KFCKFC keeps a copy of its founding recipe, signed by Colonel Harland Sanders, in a safe inside a vault at its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Alongside it sit 11 vials holding the herbs and spices themselves. The company behind that…
WalmartWalmart began as one discount store in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. By 2026 it was valued at over $1 trillion.
ComcastComcast began as a small cable operator in Tupelo, Mississippi. It had five channels and 12,000 customers in 1963.
Warner Bros. DiscoveryWarner Bros. Discovery borrowed its tagline from a 1941 film.
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…
General MotorsGeneral Motors was started by a man who insisted he disliked cars. William C. Durant had built horse-drawn carriages.
Meta PlatformsMark Zuckerberg announced on October 28, 2021 that Facebook was changing its name to Meta Platforms.
Bank of AmericaBank of America began as a storefront bank for Italian immigrants. Amadeo Giannini opened it in San Francisco in 1904.
Mars Inc.In Chicago, a commuter rail station bears a single plain name, Mars. It stands beside a candy factory belonging to Mars, Incorporated, the maker of M&M's and Twix. The company is entirely owned by the Mars family. In 2022 it reported US$45…
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…
Kellogg'sThe Kellogg Company, known to shoppers as Kellogg's, traces its origins to a batch of wheat-berry dough that a doctor left behind one night. By 2018 the company made and sold its products in over 180 countries. Its largest factory stood at…
Apple Inc.Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus to help start Apple. Steve Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator to fund a circuit board.
FedExThe FedEx logo hides a right-pointing arrow between the E and the X.
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.
MastercardMastercard began after Bank of America refused a bank a card license for being too large.
General ElectricGeneral Electric's logo has a nickname: the meatball. Arthur L. Rich designed the blue circle in 1899.
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…
YahooIn 2002, Yahoo offered $3 billion to buy Google, and Google's leaders said no. Google reportedly wanted $5 billion.
IBMIBM began in 1911 as a merger of four companies, including a meat slicer maker.
Ford Motor CompanyFord's first president was a banker, not Henry Ford. Investors wanted John S. Gray in charge to calm their fears.
IntelIntel almost called itself "Moore Noyce," which sounds like "more noise."
General DynamicsGeneral Dynamics traces back to a single $150,000 submarine the U.S. Navy bought in 1900.
The Coca-Cola CompanyCoca-Cola began as a pharmacist's attempt to escape morphine addiction.
Visa Inc.Visa does not issue credit cards, extend credit, or set your interest rate. Banks build on its payment network.
HeinzThe H. J. Heinz Company, known to most people as Heinz, owes its most famous number to a sign seen from a train. In 1896, founder Henry J. Heinz was riding an elevated train in New York City when he noticed a shoe store advertising 21…
Berkshire HathawayBerkshire Hathaway has a share price that looks like a typo. In August 2024, a single Class A share reached $700,000, the highest per-share price of any public company in the world. That same month, the company became the first…
Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts, which once put its programmers in full-page ads, agreed in 2025 to a $55 billion buyout.
7-Eleven7-Eleven, headquartered in Irving, Texas, operates, franchises or licenses roughly 85,000 stores in 20 countries and territories, as of August 2024. Few retail brands have spread so widely, and fewer still have done it without a single…