In 1994 Apple was about to go insolvent after failing multiple times to create a next generation OS, and spending the remaing money acquiring NeXT, which happened to be a reverse acquisition in the end.
What do you consider a major corporation? In (fiscal year) 1997 when it merged with Next and started to push objective-c the company had $7bn in revenue (down from $11bn a couple of years before, that’s true) and more than 8000 employees. The next couple of years sales were around $6bn but increased to $8bn in 2000.