What just happened? Apple kicked off the New Year with a bang, becoming the first publicly traded company to hit a $3 trillion valuation on the first day of trading in 2022. The Cupertino-based tech giant briefly reached the $3 trillion mark when shares hit a high of $182.85 on Monday. When the market closed, share value had slid slightly to $182.01, meaning Apple finished the day with a market cap of $2.99 trillion.

To make sense of the figure, one could combine AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Netflix, Disney, Walmart and Bitcoin, and Apple is still worth more.

The achievement is largely symbolic, but it does highlight just how much value Apple has added in a relatively short period of time.

Apple reached a $1 trillion market cap in August 2018 and needed just two more years to hit the $2 trillion mark. The tech titan took only 16 months to tack on another $1 trillion to break through the $3 trillion barrier.

Big tech in general has had an impressive run as of late. Microsoft is currently valued at $2.5 trillion and Google isn't too far behind at just south of $2 trillion. Amazon and Tesla have also shown out in recent months, with the former holding onto a $1.74 trillion market cap and the latter sitting at $1.2 trillion as of writing.

Apple reportedly has a solid product lineup in store for 2022, with new Macs, Apple Watches, refreshed iPhones and more on deck. We might even see Apple's long-rumored mixed reality headset break cover this year.