This year, the tech industry lost more than $7 trillion in valuations on the stock market. The worst performance was that of Tesla, closely followed by Meta. While Amazon was the first company in the world to lose a trillion dollars in market value.
After the skyrocketing surges of earnings during the coronavirus pandemic, 2022 has been an “annus horribilis” for tech giants. The economy crashed, stocks fell, inflation skyrocketed, the belt tightened, and Silicon Valley was one of the hardest hit places. In part, because some of his companies have had such explosive and sustained growth, for so long, that it seemed almost impossible that they could be stopped or slowed down. Yet, here we are.
In mid-October, seven of the largest technology companies, including Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, sometimes referred to as “Faang” plus Tesla, lost more than 3,000 billions of dollars in combined market value. Google and Microsoft are down about $700 billion each and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, another $600 billion.
In late November, the situation worsened. Amazon became the first company, ever, to single-handedly lose a trillion dollars in market value. On Nov. 9, Bloomberg reported that the stock value of the ecommerce and cloud computing giant had risen from $1.88 trillion to $879 billion. At the same time, not far from Amazon’s descent, Microsoft was losing $889 billion.
Finally, in December, Tesla shares hit their lowest level since 2020, down about 69% from last year. In short, a general collapse, which, according to CNBC, cost the technology industry more than 7 trillion dollars in all of 2022.