Microsoft on Thursday joined the exclusive $4 trillion club, pushing past the milestone after its shares jumped more than 5% on the back of strong quarterly results.
The surge intensifies the ongoing high-stakes race among America’s biggest tech titans—Microsoft, Apple, and more recently, Nvidia—to dominate the trillion-dollar valuation tier that now serves as a litmus test of global tech supremacy.
The software giant reported 18% revenue growth—its fastest in more than three years—driven almost entirely by the continued strength of its Azure cloud computing division. For the first time, Microsoft disclosed actual dollar figures for Azure and related cloud services, revealing they pulled in more than $75 billion in fiscal 2025. That’s a 34% jump from the prior year and underscores how critical Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure has become in powering the ongoing artificial intelligence boom.
With Thursday’s rally, Microsoft became the second U.S. company to hit the $4 trillion mark this year, following Nvidia, which briefly crossed the threshold earlier in June. Nvidia, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) are the essential hardware behind most AI models—including those from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta—has seen explosive investor demand amid an industry-wide rush to build data centers and scale AI capacity. Its stock is up 33% in 2025 alone.
Apple, once the undisputed leader of the trillion-dollar club and the first company to ever cross the $1 trillion threshold back in 2018, now trails both Microsoft and Nvidia. Apple’s market cap sits around $3.2 trillion, following a 17% drop in its stock price this year. Investor concerns have mounted over Apple’s sluggish push into generative AI, with critics suggesting the company is falling behind while rivals like Microsoft and Nvidia reap first-mover advantage.
Analysts say Apple has failed to match the pace of its peers in building or acquiring advanced AI capabilities. While rivals like Microsoft and Google have poured tens of billions into AI research, cloud infrastructure, and landmark acquisitions, Apple has remained tight-lipped, offering only incremental updates to Siri and vague promises through its “Apple Intelligence” initiative.
“The incomplete AI strategy is still the biggest overhang, but we think Apple still has approximately 1.5 years to effect a compelling solution,” TD Cowen analyst Krish Sankar wrote in a note on Monday. He recommends buying the shares.
The fierce competition among these U.S. tech behemoths has become one of the defining narratives of the global financial markets. For over a year, Microsoft and Apple traded places as the world’s most valuable public company. Then came Nvidia, whose rise has rewritten the traditional order by turning chipmaking into a central pillar of the AI economy.
All three companies are not only battling for investor confidence but are deeply intertwined in the AI race—Microsoft has invested billions into OpenAI and continues to integrate AI across its suite of products; Nvidia supplies the hardware that makes AI possible; and Apple, while quieter, is expected to roll out AI features across its devices and operating systems.
Apple is set to release its quarterly earnings later Thursday, and markets are watching closely for signals about its AI roadmap. A strong showing could help Apple regain ground, but as it stands, Microsoft and Nvidia are setting the pace in a market increasingly dominated by cloud, chips, and artificial intelligence.
As these companies vie for position in the $4 trillion stratosphere, the battle is no longer just about size—it’s now about relevance in the next era of technology. And for now, the companies building the tools and infrastructure for AI appear to have the upper hand.
