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Multinational companies headquartered in the United States

  • MicrosoftThe January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics put a microcomputer called the Altair 8800 on its cover, and two childhood friends saw an opening.
  • 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…
  • GoogleGoogle began in January 1996 as a research project by two PhD students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
  • 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…
  • ComcastComcast Corporation began not as a broadcasting giant but as a small cable operator in Tupelo, Mississippi, with five channels and 12,000 customers.
  • Warner Bros. DiscoveryThe Warner brothers Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack opened their film studio on the 4th of April 1923 in Hollywood. They built an empire that would eventually…
  • Alphabet Inc.Alphabet Inc. was born on the 2nd of October 2015, not as a startup or a spinoff, but as a deliberate act of corporate reinvention by two of the most…
  • 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…
  • Meta PlatformsThe Facebook logo appeared on a billboard welcoming the company to Nasdaq in 2012. This moment marked the end of a four-year journey that began when Mark…
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • HasbroOn the 6th of December 1923, three Polish-Jewish immigrant brothers named Henry, Hillel, and Herman Hassenfeld founded a company called Hassenfeld Brothers…
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • General ElectricGeneral Electric's logo is a blue circle with four curved white lines that suggest the blades of a fan, wrapped around cursive letters spelling GE. Arthur L.
  • 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…
  • YahooYahoo began as a handmade list. In January 1994, two electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University named Jerry Yang and David Filo started…
  • IBMIBM, formally the International Business Machines Corporation, was born in Endicott, New York, on the 16th of June 1911, when a financier named Charles…
  • 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.
  • IntelIntel Corporation was founded on the 18th of July 1968, in a Mountain View garage of ambition by two men who had just walked away from one of the most…
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts began with a meeting in February 1982, when Trip Hawkins walked into the offices of Sequoia Capital and pitched a company he was calling…