Sun Microsystems shed 96% of market cap
Sun Microsystems, valued at $205 billion at its 2000 peak, shed 96% of its market cap as its internet clients went bankrupt.
Snapshot · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
No Mercy / No Malice: 1999.AI
Explore episode
Jul 18, 2026
Where this was said
B2B Dominoes: Sun Microsystems and DoubleClick
At 6:20 · chapter starts 6:00
The B2C collapse didn't stay contained. Sun Microsystems, whose tagline was 'We're the dot in dot-com,' had built its business on powering the internet companies now going bankrupt. At its 2000 peak, Sun was valued at $205 billion — nearly as much as General Electric. Then its clients vanished. Net income of $1.8 billion in 2000 turned into a $2.4 billion loss by 2003, and the company shed 96% of its market cap before Oracle acquired what remained for $7.4 billion in 2009. DoubleClick, the era's dominant ad tech company, fell from a $12 billion valuation to $800 million before being taken private, only to be acquired by Google in 2007 for $3 billion — a reminder that not all dot-com technology was worthless, just the business models built on top of it.
Nortel's Collapse: When Infrastructure Ate the Telecom Crash
Nortel carried 75% of North America's internet traffic and was valued at $230 billion at its peak. Then the dominoes hit infrastructure. Within a year, 90% of its value was gone. Along with Global Crossing and Lucent, Nortel had lent money to the same dot-coms now going bankrupt — and none of the three survived.
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