By Agencies
Microsoft blew past $4 trillion in market value Thursday, joining Nvidia as the only public companies ever to hit that milestone – and making it look almost routine in the process.
Shares jumped nearly 8 percent after the company reported a blowout quarter: $76.7 billion in revenue, up 18 percent, and net income up 24 percent to $27.2 billion.
Azure, Microsoft’s cloud crown jewel, grew 34 percent year-over-year – and for the first time, Microsoft gave investors what they’d been asking for: a real number.
Azure now brings in $75 billion annually. No estimates. No opacity. Just scale.
That was enough to push Microsoft over the $4 trillion line in after-hours trading, where it stayed through market open – staking the company’s claim not just as a leader in enterprise AI but as the backbone of it.
While Nvidia has built the chips, Microsoft is building the moat. Its AI push is no longer theoretical: Generative tools are being hardwired into its Office suite, Teams, GitHub, and Azure cloud services.
Copilot is showing up in Word and Excel. Enterprise contracts are shifting to AI-first. And the price tag? Massive. Microsoft plans to spend $30 billion in capex next quarter alone – a $120 billion annual run rate – to expand its AI infrastructure footprint (by funding more data centers, more GPUs, and more power-hungry cloud capacity to support its growing customer base).
That kind of outlay might typically spook investors. But when it’s funding 39 percent Azure growth and feeding directly into enterprise AI deployment, it’s a very different story. Microsoft’s stock is now up nearly 30% on the year – and it’s not even the hottest thing in tech. That title belongs to Nvidia, which passed $4 trillion first.
According to Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives, “the race to $4 trillion has begun,” as he titled a June client note where he called both companies the poster children for the AI revolution. He said Microsoft and Nvidia would each cross the $4 trillion mark this summer — they did — and that $5 trillion will be the next frontier. “This tech bull market is still early,” Ives wrote, and AI is its driving engine. “Both are foundational pieces of building on the biggest tech trend we have seen in our 25 years covering tech stocks on the Street.”
Microsoft’s growth isn’t driven by a single product but a platform shift – one that touches nearly every layer of the modern enterprise stack. It’s also more transparent than it used to be: CFO Amy Hood said the company has increased headcount every quarter since late 2023.
It’s a new look for Microsoft: bigger, bolder, and less shy about leading the market. The markets like what they see. Microsoft’s results – along with Meta smashing Q2 expectations – have helped lift the broader tech sector, sending the Nasdaq Composite up and extending a Big Tech rally.
