The MANTA-7: How Seven Tech Giants Became Bigger Than Nations

Seven U.S. tech giants now dominate global markets like nation-states, reshaping capitalism—and democracy—in their image.

Between 2014 and 2024, seven American giants—Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet—earned a combined $2 trillion in net profit on $14.5 trillion in revenue. Together they are now worth an extraordinary $22.4 trillion in market value—roughly four-fifths the size of the U.S. economy and larger than China’s GDP.

The stock market is no longer a market of companies; it is a market of seven balance sheets. As of late 2025, the MANTA-7 together account for around 37.5 per cent of the entire S&P 500’s market capitalisation—a level of concentration unprecedented in modern financial history.

Source: Orbis historical consolidated accounts, 2014–2024.

In 2024 alone, the MANTA-7 generated roughly $2 trillion in combined revenue. To put that in perspective, only a handful of the world’s largest economies exceed $2 trillion in annual GDP—meaning these seven corporate groups each operate at a scale greater than most nations on Earth. They operate at the scale of states but without their democratic obligations. Across the decade, their average effective tax rate hovered between 12 and 15 per cent—a modest fiscal footprint compared with their global reach.

To grasp how low that footprint really is, imagine a professional in Ireland earning €85,000 a year. At a typical 35 per cent effective tax rate, they would take home around €4,500 a month. If they were taxed like the MANTA-7—at less than 15 per cent—their net pay would rise to over €6,000. That near €2,000 gap each month marks the difference between ordinary taxation and corporate privilege. For the world’s most profitable multinationals, taxation functions less like a social contract and more like a charitable contribution.

Over the past decade, Apple and Microsoft together produced more than half the group’s total profits, leading the charge into digital capitalism. Alphabet and Meta monetised human attention. Nvidia became indispensable to the AI boom. Amazon embedded itself in logistics and cloud computing. Tesla turned industrial ambition into speculative momentum. What unites them is not innovation but centralised control—of data, platforms, and the digital infrastructure of the modern economy.

From competition to concentration

Digital capitalism was meant to democratise enterprise, fulfilling the neoliberal ideal of everyone as an entrepreneur. Instead, it entrenched monopoly power. Network effects, intellectual-property control, profit-shifting, and global reach turned early advantages into structural dominance. By 2024, the MANTA-7’s profits rivalled those of Europe’s manufacturing giants. Operating margins above 25 per cent would be impossible in a genuinely contestable market.

Each corporate group now functions as a self-financing ecosystem. With hundreds of billions in combined cash reserves, they no longer depend on external finance. They acquire competitors before they threaten, shape innovation through strategic investment, and use share buybacks to concentrate ownership further. Their share prices move bond yields and currencies. In effect, they are macro-economic institutions—not firms within markets but markets unto themselves.

This concentration poses a deeper problem than wealth inequality or market power. It corrodes the feedback loops that keep capitalism and democracy in balance. When economic power centralises, political power follows. Governments rely on these multinationals for cloud infrastructure, AI research, geopolitical security, revenue and data management. The state, once regulator, becomes a client of techno-feudal lords.

Too big to fail—or to govern

Investors call this efficiency; political economists call it corporate capture. A world driven by seven balance sheets is one hostage to their decisions and cycles. When their valuations fall, global markets shudder. When they pivot—often on waves of hype, FOMO, or speculative frenzy—capital and policy both follow, with states—ultimately taxpayers—stepping in to stabilise the system when it falters.

The MANTA-7 represent the reality of capitalism rather than the textbook ideal of competitive markets. They deliver lucrative gains for shareholders by exercising monopoly power. Their combination of profit maximisation, tax minimisation, and wealth protection is the signature of monopoly capitalism—profitable, powerful, and politically corrosive. Contemporary economics, with its abstract models of perfect competition, simply ignores this reality of concentrated corporate power.

Democratic capitalism cannot survive extreme inequality or captured markets. Unless democracies find ways to diffuse economic power—through antitrust, industrial policy, taxation, or public ownership of critical infrastructures—the magnificent seven will continue to define not just markets, but the limits of democracy itself.