I think people don't like counting it because of the way it was achieved. IIRC they only floated a super tiny percentage of their stock and so the overall valuation was inflated. It felt then a little the way cryptocurrency market capitalizations feel now.
That makes sense. It's like when 37Signals said they were worth a few trillion because they sold a fraction of a share for $1.
Exactly.
There's also some weirdness with including quasi-state owned entities.
Especially when Dutch East India and South Seas were actual states in almost every way except name. Once you have an army, provide services and collect taxes you are a state.
If you read the article, it mentions that it would be the first US-based company to hit the four comma club.
They even point out that the East India Trading company, when adjusted for inflation, was a 7.9T company.
Ah I didn't notice their "US Based" qualifier.
Which still wouldn't be true because Standard Oil, adjusted for inflation, was >$1Tn.
Standard Oil is mentioned in the article.
Yes, defeating the claim of the article.
It's not really adjusted for inflation, though. It's adjusted for what percentage of the world's GDP at the time it constituted. That's a metric that favors older companies because there was a much smaller number of companies at the time.