Microsoft Corp. has become the second U.S. public company to attain a market value of $2 trillion, boosted by its dominance in cloud computing and enterprise software which continues to expand further in a post-coronavirus world.
The American tech giant’s shares jumped as much as 1.2 percent, enough for the software company to briefly join Apple Inc, as one of just two businesses trading at such a high price before closing pennies short of the record at $265.51. Saudi Aramco briefly surpassed this record in December 2019, but now has a market capitalization of around $1.9 trillion.
Microsoft is also one of the only major U.S. technology companies to have dodged the latest wave of antitrust investigation from increasingly aggressive American antitrust regulators, allowing it to seek acquisitions and product expansion more freely.
Mr. Satya Nadella, who took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, has transformed the Redmond, Washington-based corporation into the world’s largest seller of cloud-computing software, including both its infrastructure and Office application cloud units.
Demand for Microsoft’s software and cloud computing services has surged since many were compelled to start working and learning remotely more than a year ago due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Microsoft’s stock has increased by more than 64 percent since stay-at-home orders were fulfilled in March 2020. In April, Microsoft posted a third-quarter profit of $14.8 billion, up 38 percent from the same period last year. Revenue for the quarter was up 19 percent.
Amazon and Google are also gunning to join the $2 trillion club. Amazon is ranked No.3 on the list with a $1.76 trillion valuation, closely followed by Google at $1.67 trillion.
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