The 5 most valuable US tech companies are now worth more than $5 trillion after Alphabet's record close

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The 5 most valuable US tech companies are now worth more than $5 trillion after Alphabet's record close
Sundar Pichai

Google-parent Alphabet on Thursday became the fourth US company to reach a $1 trillion market valuation, pushing the total value of the five biggest tech companies to a record $5 trillion.

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Apple and Microsoft sit well above the $1 trillion level, surging through the new year after massive gains in 2019. The S&P 500's information tech sector, which includes the two aforementioned companies, is up more than 5% year-to-date, outperforming all other groups in the benchmark index.

Amazon previously held a market value above the four-comma threshold but has since sank to roughly $930 billion. Facebook sits at the lowest valuation among the group of five with a market cap of about $630 billion. Including Facebook in the group drives Big Tech's collective value above $5.2 trillion.

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CNBC first reported on the milestone valuation for Big Tech.

The record-high valuation for Big Tech arrives amid heightened scrutiny from regulators and US legislators. Calls to break up the most valuable tech firms have taken center stage at congressional hearings, Democratic primary debates, and in governments abroad as many view the companies as reaching monopolistic levels of influence.

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The European Union's antitrust regulators recently homed in on Big Tech following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the group is now grilling Google over its data collection policies. State attorneys general in the US are also investigating the search engine giant, yet the months of regulatory pressure haven't held shares down. Alphabet jumped more than 30% in 2019 and is already up nearly 9% in the new year.

Here are the five highest-valued tech companies, ranked in ascending order by market cap. Data is as of market close on January 16.

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5. Facebook

5. Facebook

Market cap: $632 billion

Year-to-date performance: up 8.5%

4. Amazon

4. Amazon

Market cap: $931 billion

Year-to-date performance: up 1.7%

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3. Alphabet

3. Alphabet

Market cap: $1 trillion

Year-to-date performance: up 8.6%

2. Microsoft

2. Microsoft

Market cap: $1.27 trillion

Year-to-date performance: up 5.4%

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