On Wall Street, market cap serves as a differentiator of good and great businesses. While there are plenty of budding small- and mid-cap companies, businesses with valuations in excess of $10 billion have (more often than not) demonstrated their innovative capacity and backed up their worth to Wall Street.

But among this class of proven businesses is a truly elite group of 11 public companies that have reached the psychologically important trillion-dollar valuation plateau, not accounting for the effects of inflation over time (looking at you, Dutch East India Company). These 11 indelible titans include all seven members of the “Magnificent Seven,” Broadcom, Berkshire Hathaway, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Saudi Aramco, the latter of which doesn’t trade on U.S. exchanges.

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Last week, integrated cloud applications and cloud infrastructure services provider Oracle (ORCL 3.33%) came within a stone’s throw of becoming the 12th public company to reach at least a $1 trillion valuation before retreating. While the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) makes it a logical candidate to eventually surpass a market cap of $1 trillion, there’s another industry leader that’s ideally positioned to become Wall Street’s next trillion-dollar stock.

Oracle came oh-so-close to entering the trillion-dollar ranks

Following the closing bell on Sept. 9, Larry Ellison’s company delivered nothing short of a jaw-dropper with its fiscal 2026 first-quarter operating results.

It’s exceptionally rare when a megacap company moves by a double-digit percentage in a single trading session. At one point on Sept. 10, Oracle stock was higher by more than 40% and peaked at a market cap of $982 billion. Though it’s given back $150 billion in market value since its Sept. 10 peak, it closed out the week with a 25% gain, which isn’t shabby at all.

The hoopla surrounding Oracle has to do with its updated remaining performance obligations (RPO) forecast — RPO is essentially a backlog of future revenue based on contracts signed — and projected growth ramp for its high-margin Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) segment. OCI offers on-demand cloud-computing services, which can run AI workloads on private, public, and hybrid clouds, and also leases out AI compute.

On a year-over-year basis for the quarter ended Aug. 31, Oracle announced its RPO jumped 359% to $455 billion on the heels of signing four multibillion contracts during the fiscal first quarter. During the company’s conference call, CEO Safra Catz singled out privately held OpenAI and xAI, as well as Magnificent Seven members Meta Platforms and Nvidia, as some of these significant cloud contracts.

What’s perhaps even more impressive than the growth of Oracle’s backlog is its projected ramp in sales from OCI. Catz laid out a stunning growth forecast that calls for:

• 77% sales growth to $18 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2026
• 78% sales growth to $32 billion in FY 2027
• 128% sales growth to $73 billion in FY 2028
• 56% sales growth to $114 billon in FY 2029
• 26% sales growth to $144 billion in FY 2030

Catz and Oracle co-founder/Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison have outlined a clear path to outsized growth that the company has lacked since the dot-com days. However, a wait-and-see approach from investors may be preferred in the quarters to come given that Oracle has missed Wall Street’s earnings per share consensus in three of the last four quarters. This could stall its efforts to quickly join the elite trillion-dollar club.

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This is the sensational company that can beat Oracle to the trillion-dollar plateau

Considering how Wall Street lives and breathes anything having to do with AI, you might be thinking a tech company is the next logical candidate to reach the trillion-dollar plateau. But what if I told you that time-tested retailer Walmart (WMT 0.14%), which closed out last week with a market cap of $825 billion, has an inside path to a $1 trillion valuation?

On the surface, things might not seem perfect for the retail industry. Recent job market revisions point to a potentially weakening U.S. economy.

At the same time, the effects of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies have begun to show up in monthly inflation reports. Between May and August, the trailing-12-month inflation rate, based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), rose by 67 basis points to 2.92%. When coupled with a weakening job market, rising inflation ignites fears of stagflation, which is a worse-case scenario for the Federal Reserve.

These scenarios are typically bad news for most retailers — but Walmart isn’t “most retailers.”

For decades, Walmart’s success has derived from its focus on value and convenience. When times are tough or uncertain in America, people turn to Walmart for a good deal on groceries, toiletries, and countless other items. If Trump’s tariffs are eventually ruled legal by the Supreme Court and remain in place, their inflationary impact is only going to drive more consumers, including affluent shoppers, into Walmart stores. Even if the company eats a portion of these tariffs, the benefit from increased foot traffic more than outweighs its sacrifice.

To build on this low-cost/value point, Walmart undeniably uses its size to its advantage. It has deep pockets and purchases products in bulk to lower its per-unit cost. This allows it to undercut mom-and-pop shops and national grocery chains on price and keeps consumers confined to its ecosystem of products and services (especially when they live close to a supercenter).

Another key to Walmart’s success has been its embrace of technology. Promoting its online retail channels and Walmart+ subscription service helped lift global e-commerce sales by 25% during the fiscal 2026 second quarter (ended July 31), and has pushed its U.S. e-commerce operations into the profit column. It’s also leaning into AI as a way to improve supply chain management and improve order fulfillment times.

It would only take a 21% move higher for Walmart to become the 12th public company to reach $1 trillion, and it looks to be in an ideal position to do so.