SILICON VALLEY’S
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOAN MARCUS
T he growth of companies
in Silicon
Valley in 2018 was
nothing short of
phenomenal—not only in
revenue and profit but in
job creation as well. The
major highlights:
• The numbers put up by
Alphabet Inc., the parent
company of Google, and
Intel Corp. tell the larger
story. Together they added
more than 18,000 jobs
to the Valley last year.
According to Security and
Exchange Commission
filings, Apple added roughly
9,000 additional jobs.
• Building a larger labor
force is critical to companies
that are generating
double-digit earnings
growth—tens of billions of
dollars’ worth. Tesla for
example grew its revenue
from $11.7 billion in 2017 to
$21.46 billion last year—even
while it continued to lose
vast sums of money.
• Other companies
turned huge losses into a
profit in 2018. eBay, which
lost more than a billion dollars
in 2017, posted a $2.53
million profit last year.
• Fifteen companies
joined the billion-dollar
profit club last year. Net-
App, for example, a Sunnyvale
hybrid cloud data management
company, logged a
$509 million profit in 2017
and a year later and earned
$1.02 billion. Bolstered by
its own production efforts,
Netflix more than doubled
its profits from $558.9 million
in 2017 to $1.21 billion
last year.
• The initial public
offering market, strong
in 2018, added newcomers
San Jose-based Arlo
Technologies, a maker of
Revenue Rank Company Headquarters 2018 FY 2018 Net FY Number of
2018 2017 1982 Revenue Income Ending Employees
1 1 7 Apple Inc. Cupertino $261.61B $59.43B Sept 132,000
2 2 Alphabet Inc. (Google) Mountain View $132.82B $30.74B Dec 98,771
3 3 4 Intel Corp. Santa Clara $70.85B $21.05B Dec 107,100
4 4 HP Inc./HPQ Palo Alto $58.67B $4.19B Oct 55,000
5 6 Facebook Inc. Menlo Park $55.84B $22.11B Dec 35,587
6 5 Cisco Systems Inc. San Jose $50.82B $12.87B Jul 74,200
7 7 Oracle Corp. Redwood City $39.83B $10.86B May 138,000
8 8 1 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Palo Alto $30.73B $707M Oct 66,000
9 9 Gilead Sciences Inc. Foster City $22.13B $5.46B Dec 10,000
10 14 Tesla Inc. Palo Alto $21.46B ($9.76B) Dec 37,543
11 10 Synnex Corp. Fremont $20.81B $306.87M Nov 107,400
12 11 28 Applied Materials Inc. Santa Clara $16.8B $3.92B Oct 21,000
13 12 PayPal Holdings, Inc. San Jose $15.45B $2.06B Dec 18,700
14 13 Ross Stores Inc. Dublin $14.98B $1.59B Jan 83,700
15 15 Netflix Inc. Los Gatos $15.79B $1.21B Dec 5,400
16 16 NVIDIA Corp. Santa Clara $11.72B $4.14B Jan 11,528
17 18 LAM Research Corp. Fremont $10.87B $2.9B Jun 10,200
18 17 eBay Inc. San Jose $10.75B $2.53B Dec 14,100
19 20 Adobe Systems Inc. San Jose $9.55B $2.68B Dec 19,560
20 19 VMware Inc. Palo Alto $8.91B $2.42B Dec 21,700
21 21 Sanmina Corp. San Jose $7.55B $97.33M Oct 46,000
22 24 13 Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Sunnyvale $6.47B 337M Dec 8,900
23 26 Intuit Inc. Mountain View $6.23B $1.25B Jul 8,200
24 23 NetApp Inc. Sunnyvale $6.19B $1.02B Apr 10,100
25 22 Franklin Resources Inc. San Mateo $6.12B $1.6B Sep 9,500
26 25 Robert Half International Inc. Menlo Park $5.8B $434.29M Dec 17,200
27 28 Electronic Arts Inc. Redwood City $5.29B $1.42 Mar 9,300
28 29 Agilent Technologies, Inc. Santa Clara $4.99B $1.14M Oct 13,800
29 30 Equinix Inc. Redwood City $5.07B $1.14B Dec 7,273
30 31 Symantec Corp. Mountain View $4.75B ($72M) Apr 12,518
31 27 Juniper Networks Inc. Sunnyvale $4.65B $566.90M Dec 9,381
32 32 64 KLA-Tencor Corp. Milpitas $4.3B $1.42B Jun 10,000
33 33 Intuitive Surgical Inc. Sunnyvale $3.72B $1.13B Dec 4,444
34 34 Granite Construction Inc. Watsonville $3.32B $42.41M Dec 3,600
35 35 Synopsys Inc. Mountain View $3.17B $589.72M Oct 12,590
36 37 Trimble Inc. Sunnyvale $3.11B $282.80M Dec 11,500
37 36 Varian Medical Systems Inc. Palo Alto $2.98B $365.40M Sep 7,174
38 38 Xilinx Inc. San Jose $2.94B $838.94M Apr 4,200
39 42 Workday, Inc. Pleasanton $2.82B ($418.26M) Jan 8,200
40 47 ServiceNow Inc. Santa Clara $2.61B ($26.7M) Dec 6,222
41 43 The Cooper Companies, Inc. Pleasanton $2.57B $1.68M Oct 7,400
42 44 Autodesk, Inc. San Rafael $2.57B ($80.8M) Jan 7,000
43 45 SVB Financial Group Santa Clara $2.55B $973.84M Dec 2,438
44 40 Maxim Integrated Products Inc. San Jose $2.5B $717.11M Jun 7,040
45 39 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. San Jose $2.48B $354.59M Dec 6,099
46 53 Arista Networks Inc. Santa Clara $2.15B $332.2M Dec 2,300
47 46 Cadence Design Systems Inc. San Jose $2.14B $345.78M Dec 7,094
48 55 Align Technology Inc. San Jose $1.97B $400.24M Dec 11,660
49 59 Shutterfly Inc. Redwood City $1.96B $50.4M Dec 1,934
50 49 VeriFone Systems Inc. San Jose $1.87B ($173.829M) Oct 5,600
60 South Bay Accent