By Pranav Kashyap
(Reuters) -Microsoft is set to soar past $4 trillion in market valuation for the first time on Thursday, as a blockbuster earnings report helps the tech behemoth become the second company after Nvidia to surpass the milestone.
The software company forecast a record $30 billion in capital spending for the current fiscal first quarter and reported booming sales in its Azure cloud computing business on Wednesday.
Shares of Microsoft were up 8.5% at $557.03 in early premarket trading, valuing it at $4.14 trillion.
Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft first cracked the $1 trillion mark in April 2019.
Its move to $3 trillion was more measured than other tech giants, Nvidia and Apple, with AI bellwether Nvidia tripling its value in just about a year and clinching the $4 trillion milestone before any other company on July 9. Apple was last valued at $3.12 trillion.
Lately, breakthroughs in trade talks between the U.S. and its trading partners ahead of President Donald Trump’s August 1 tariff deadline have buoyed stocks, propelling the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to record highs.
Microsoft, the second largest U.S. company, has rebounded nearly 50% from its April 2025 lows, when global markets were rattled by Trump’s tariff offensive.
Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar bet on OpenAI is proving to be a game-changer, powering its Office Suite and Azure offerings with cutting-edge AI and fueling the stock to more than double its value since ChatGPT’s late-2022 debut.
Armed with exclusive access to OpenAI’s models, Microsoft has raced to the front of the generative AI pack – supercharging its Azure cloud business, now the company’s top revenue driver, and solidifying its dominance in the tech landscape, compared to Google’s cloud and Amazon’s web services.
Wall Street’s surging confidence in the company comes on the heels of back-to-back record revenues for the tech giant since September 2022.
The stock’s rally had also received an extra boost as the tech giant trimmed its workforce and doubled down on AI investments — determined to cement its lead as businesses everywhere race to harness the technology.
While sweeping U.S. tariffs had investors bracing for tighter business spending, Microsoft’s strong earnings have shown that the company’s books are yet to take a hit from the levies.
(Reporting by Medha Singh and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
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