Done with Day 1 ✅

The world’s largest company exceeded the $3 trillion market capitalization level intraday, becoming the first company ever to do so. 🏆

Just three years after reaching the $1 trillion level, Apple overtook $3 trillion and eliminated any fears that the tech giant’s growth would slow down. 🙅

$AAPL ascended 2.5% to $182 and closed at all-time highs. The company gained 34.6% in 2021 and is off to a killer start in 2022. Here’s the daily chart:

Microsoft is second in line behind Apple, sporting a current market cap of $2.6 trillion. Alphabet is worth roughly $2 trillion while Amazon sits at $1.75 trillion.

The startup space was hot in 2021 🔥 — over the last year, capital has been flowing into seed-stage and early-stage startups. As a matter of fact, a record of $93 billion was invested in early-stage companies last year. But could that trend backfire soon?? 

From web3 to edtech, capital from VC firms flooded a variety of sectors in 2021. During and after the pandemic, tech-based startups provided a plethora of early-stage investing opportunities so innovative and enticing to investors that the median valuation of most seed or early-stage startups ballooned last year. 🎈 💣 In 2021, the median valuation of an early-stage U.S. startup was $26 million — in 2020, that median valuation was $16 million.

As many notable venture capital firms rake in some of their best returns since the dot-com bubble, investors are beginning to question the sustainability of the post-pandemic startup explosion. A partner at Bain Capital Ventures, Matt Harris, commented “It’s going too well. I’m not actually that smart. It can’t continue like this.” An unprecedented 42% of Harris’ portfolio companies IPO’d in 2021. 🚀 🚀

According to Pitchbook and the WSJ, the value of U.S.-based/VC-backed companies that publicly listed or were acquired in Q3 of 2021 totaled $582.5 billion. That number was just $289 billion in 2020. 💰 💰 Additionally, the unrealized gains of international VC portfolios increased to $1.33 trillion in March 2021, which was up from $803 billion in Q4 2019.

Many industry veterans recognize that macroeconomic factors such as bond yields and tech adoption may fuel startup valuations, but sky-high boosts to early-stage valuations don’t come without the risk of a ‘bubble burst.’ 💥

Twitter just sold MoPub, its mobile ad platform, to a game maker/marketing software provider called AppLovin. MoPub sold for $1.05 billion in cash. 🤑

As Twitter seeks to revamp other areas of its business, the company announced its decision to sell MoPub in October 2021 after the platform unveiled its lofty plan to double its revenue in 2 years. Twitter’s GM of Revenue Products, Bruce Falck, shared: 

“With the sale of MoPub completed, we continue to concentrate our efforts on enhancing ads across our platform. Our goal is to deliver faster growth in key areas and accelerate our product development.” 

MoPub brought Twitter $188 million in revenue in 2020, but the platform has since decided to focus on the expansion of its communities and subscription services instead. $TWTR closed down 1.3%.