Microsoft hit $4 trillion (roughly Rs. 3,49,15,020 crore) in inventory market worth on Thursday, changing into the second publicly traded firm after Nvidia to surpass that milestone following a blockbuster earnings report that confirmed its large bets on AI are paying off.
Strong outcomes from Microsoft and Meta Platforms late on Thursday additionally fueled positive factors in Amazon and despatched chipmaker Nvidia to a report excessive, with the 4 heavyweight AI gamers gaining over half a trillion {dollars} in market worth.
Wall Street’s heavyweight gamers main in AI – Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms – now account for 1 / 4 of the S&P 500, in response to LSEG knowledge.
Microsoft forecast a report $30 billion in capital spending for the primary quarter of the present fiscal yr to fulfill hovering AI demand. It reported booming gross sales in its Azure cloud computing enterprise and mentioned its Copilot AI instruments had surpassed 100 million month-to-month lively customers.
Microsoft’s shares have been final up 4.5 p.c after climbing as a lot as 8 p.c.
“It is in the process of becoming more of a cloud infrastructure business and a leader in enterprise AI, doing so very profitably and cash generatively despite the heavy AI capital expenditures,” mentioned Gerrit Smit, lead portfolio supervisor, Stonehage Fleming Global Best Ideas Equity Fund.
Meta Platforms additionally doubled down on its AI ambitions, forecasting quarterly income that blew previous Wall Street estimates as synthetic intelligence supercharged its core promoting enterprise.
Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft first reached a $1 trillion inventory market worth in 2019.
Its transfer to $3 trillion was extra measured than Nvidia and Apple’s, with AI-bellwether Nvidia tripling its worth in nearly a yr and clinching the $4 trillion milestone on July 9.
Apple was final valued at $3.12 trillion.
Lately, breakthroughs in commerce talks between the United States and its buying and selling companions forward of President Donald Trump’s August 1 tariff deadline have buoyed shares, propelling the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to report highs.
Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar wager on OpenAI is proving to be a recreation changer, powering its Office Suite and Azure choices with cutting-edge AI and fueling the inventory to greater than double its worth since ChatGPT’s late-2022 debut.
Its capital expenditure forecast, its largest ever for a single quarter, has put it on observe to doubtlessly outspend its rivals over the following yr.
Meta upped the decrease finish of its annual capital spending by $2 billion – simply days after Alphabet made an analogous transfer – signaling that Silicon Valley’s race to dominate AI expertise is accelerating.
Cloud computing heavyweight Amazon.com rose 2 p.c forward of its quarterly report after the bell.
AI chip provider Nvidia climbed 0.8 p.c, lifting its market capitalization to a report $4.4 trillion.
© Thomson Reuters 2025