These tech companies have excelled both at crafting technology and at execution. The profits generated by their core business have been relentlessly reinvested into new products and services, as well as rapid expansion into new territories. Their leading ability to execute, consistent 60% gross margins and willingness to make big, but calculated bets of an audacity that established European tech companies would run away from, have delivered each a trillion dollar valuation in under a decade.
Both trillion-dollar companies, one headquartered in the UK and the other in the EU, have been lauded and supported by their respective governments. Spendtastic, the UK trillionaire, grew rapidly by offering new types of credit service to consumers in direct competition with traditional credit card companies. Risk assessments were based on a wide range of data points in addition to traditional measures such as employment and banking history. Daily step count, likelihood to exceed speed limits while driving and takeaway purchase behaviours were proven to be invaluable inputs which Spendtastic had the sole rights to. The company was particularly adept at identifying consumers with a propensity to repay late, along with a penalty payment.
In the latter half of the decade, Spendtastic became has world-leading at identifying and filtering out attempted inbound fraud. In 2030 it signed its one billionth subscriber to its machine-learning based anti-scam service, and claimed to have saved its customers a cumulative $100 trillion.
The other company, SuperSecurus is headquartered in continental Europe. It started off as a not-for-profit portal focused on balancing supply and demand of vaccines between every region in every EU state. This portal was subsequently awarded the contract to create a vaccine passport database and app used across the EU, which then expanded to most of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. It licensed vaccine status data to the growing proportion of companies that would only employ those with current vaccinations (by 2030, vaccines were able to cope with all forty Covid-19 variants of concern), and to the growing proportion of suppliers, from airlines to theme parks, that would only serve individuals that had the correct vaccinations.
Whilst this approach was initially divisive, it enabled companies and economies to continue trading without risk of lockdown. In the latter half of the decade, as Covid-19 mRNA vaccines became ever more personalised, the company pivoted its major focus to the offer of targeted gene-modification treatments and preventions, leveraging its vast, unique data set. These medications were used to address and suppress a growing range of major diseases, including multiple types of cancers, as well as, covertly, to extend expected lifetime. Subscriptions to SuperSecurus’ gene modifications were offered by the top employers as a perk to attract and retain staff. As of 2030, the most lucrative area the company was moving into was customised gene editing, which was being applied to target dementia.
The trillion-dollar valuations, and skyrocketing valuations of smaller European tech companies have been a boon for the region’s confidence, and been a just reward for bold but measured European entrepreneurship. However, there are distinct downsides. The dominance of the trillion dollar companies has further reset the balance of power between the private and public sector. It has also deepened the digital divide within countries and between countries. It has concentrated wealth among a few individuals. Last but not least, new startups have become wary of moving into in a new sector only for a tech giant to swallow the company or worse swoop into their space at the first signs of success.
