When Billions Became Trillions

Ten years ago, technology corporations spoke a common language: unicorns and billion-dollar valuations. Reaching a billion-dollar valuation was an impressive milestone. Entrepreneurs and VC alike talked about 10X growth and when you joined the Unicorn club, you were the big deal. This is all gone. Nobody talks about Unicorns anymore.

Today, that language is no longer used by leading entrepreneurs and investors. What used to be a billion-dollar company is now often a $100 billion company, and in some cases even larger. The unit of measure has changed, not because markets became irrational, but because scale itself has changed many folds.

Companies Valuations are Off the Charts

In 2022, NVIDIA was valued at roughly $200–300 billion. At the time, it was already considered one of the most important technology companies in the world. By mid 2025, Nvidia’s market capitalization moved beyond $3.5 trillion. That is not a simple repricing of the company. It is an incredible shift that puts the company in the list of the most valued companies in the world.

A similar pattern is seen with Palantir, the Denver based advanced analytics company. Palantir now trades at a valuation in the $120–150 billion range, with a price-to-earnings ratio that has at times exceeded 300×. The market is not valuing current profits in isolation; it is pricing the expectation that Palantir becomes a long-term operating part for enterprise and government systems. Whether these valuations ultimately change over time, it is a fair question. What matters is that the old valuation logic no longer explains market behavior.

(b) Talent Priced at $100 Million

The same recalibration is visible in compensation.

In the past two years, Meta has reportedly offered nine-figure compensation packages, around $100 million, to recruit top AI researchers and leaders for its super-intelligence efforts. These packages, structured through stock and long-term incentives, would have been unthinkable just two years ago.

This is not happening quietly.

At a recent gathering in San Diego NeurIPS a revealing question circulated in private conversations among researchers and executives:

“What is your number?”

Not title.

Not salary band.

Your number.

Meaning: What does it cost to secure your expertise? How many millions?

When that becomes the prevailing question, compensation stops resembling pay and starts resembling strategic acquisition.

(c) When CEO Compensation Reaches the Same Scale

This logic extends all the way to the very top.

Elon Musk has sought, and partially secured through legal battles, a multi-billion-dollar compensation package tied to his leadership at Tesla. The original structure, approved in 2018 and later challenged in court, reached a headline value of $56 billion, with subsequent market performance pushing its implied value even higher. Furthermore, according to Fortune, Mr. Musk ended 2025 with an estimated net worth of $726 billion. That number alone would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, not as a company valuation, but as individual net worth. Looking ahead, Musk may soon become the first trillionaire, depending on how three variables that are now central to his economic footprint:

• whether his xAI efforts achieve the scale their supporters expect

• whether SpaceX proceeds with an IPO at the huge valuations many observers anticipate

• whether Tesla manages to become a full-fledged robotic company

Regardless of one’s view on the merits, the signal is clear: individual compensation is now discussed at scales that once applied only to entire companies.

From 10× to 100× to 1000×

A decade ago, venture capital success was framed around 10× outcomes. That was the benchmark for an exceptional investment.

Today, many AI-linked companies are implicitly priced for 100× or even 1000× outcomes relative to current earnings. This does not mean those outcomes will all materialize. Markets will correct. Some assumptions will fail.

But the fact that this framing exists at all tells us something important: expectations of scale have shifted structurally, not incrementally.

Thinking “Huge”

This shift is not limited to technology.

In luxury, Pietro Beccari, the Italian CEO of Louis Vuitton, has been explicit with his teams:

“Don’t think big. Think huge.”

Louis Vuitton is already the largest luxury brand in the world. Beccari’s ambition is not marginal growth, but a redefinition of what scale means — extending the brand beyond products into culture, hospitality, and long-term global influence.

That same mindset now runs through technology: leaders are not optimizing within existing boundaries; they are planning for centrality.

The Italian Advantage on Scale

From an Italian perspective, scale has never been about volume alone. It has been about integration, becoming so embedded in daily life that presence feels inevitable.

Italy’s most enduring enterprises did not chase size for its own sake. They built systems meant to last.

Seen through that lens, today’s valuations, compensation structures, and growth expectations are not mysterious. They are the financial expression of a deeper shift: scale is no longer measured by growth alone, but by how central something becomes to how the world functions.

That is why billions no longer feel like the right unit of measure.