Microsoft has surpassed the $4 trillion (R73.2 trillion) mark for its company value, following closely behind Nvidia, which was the first publicly traded company to achieve this milestone.
The achievement was made following the company’s latest earnings report, which drove shares in the company up by as much as 8% before stabilising at a 4.5% increase.
Microsoft after AI
The stock market responded to Microsoft’s earnings report, particularly claims that sales for its Azure cloud computing services were climbing and details about the number of Copilot users. The company claims to have more than 100 million users at present, though no further information surrounding usage has been published. It’s just possible that folks who try the AI function out of curiosity are being lumped in with committed users, a move that would drive usage numbers up.
Not that the folks on Wall Street are that interested. It’s all about the bigger number, and that number was enough to bump Microsoft’s stock value from $3.8 trillion just a few weeks ago out beyond the latest high-water mark. Reuters reports that the software developer wasn’t the only company to see an upswing based on recent financial results. Meta saw a similar rise, which, along with Microsoft’s uptick, was enough to drive up both Amazon and Nvidia’s stock prices.
Nvidia’s 0.8% increase in value brought the chip-maker to a new record high of $4.4 trillion. Despite other tech giants nipping at its heels, Jensen Huang’s company is managing to remain out in front. Whether the industry and the world’s financial markets can survive the pace of stock market speculation on AI remains to be seen.
