Microsoft hits $2 trillion market value

Microsoft took its place in the history books as the second U.S. public company to reach a $2 trillion market value, buoyed by bets its dominance in cloud computing and enterprise software will expand further in a post-coronavirus world.

Its shares rose as much as 1.2% in New York on Tuesday, enough for the software company to briefly join Apple as one of only two companies trading at such a lofty value before closing pennies short of the mark at $265.51. Saudi Aramco eclipsed that threshold briefly in December 2019, but currently has a market value of about $1.9 trillion.

Since taking the reins in 2014, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has reshaped the Redmond-based company into the largest seller of cloud-computing software, counting both its infrastructure and Office application cloud units. Microsoft is also one of the biggest U.S. technology companies that has so far evaded the recent wave of scrutiny from increasingly active American antitrust regulators, giving it a freer hand in both acquisitions and product expansion.

Microsoft has gained 19% so far this year, outperforming Apple and Amazon.com as investors piled into the stock on expectations of long-term growth for both earnings and revenue, and expansion in areas like machine learning and cloud computing. The company’s third-quarter results, released in late April, topped expectations and demonstrated strong growth across its business segments.

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