AI Power Moves: $4T AI Market Bets, Big Deals & VTuber Boom
Microsoft just hit a major milestone—its market value soared past $4 trillion in after-hours trading on Wednesday. That puts it in an exclusive club with just one other member: Nvidia, which crossed the same mark earlier this month.
This jump came after Microsoft released its latest earnings report, which beat Wall Street’s expectations. Shares rose 8%, bumping its market cap to around $4.1 trillion. If those gains hold steady into Thursday, Microsoft will officially become the second company ever to reach that level.
What’s driving Microsoft’s success?
The big engine behind this growth is Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. For the first time, the company revealed actual dollar figures for Azure and its other cloud services: $75 billion in annual revenue—a 34% increase from the year before. That also fueled Microsoft’s overall 18% jump in revenue, its fastest growth in more than three years.
Microsoft stock has already been on a roll this year. It’s up 22% so far in 2025, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 8% gain. Just last week, the stock closed at a record high of $513.71, and in after-hours trading, it’s now over $553.
A race at the top
Both Microsoft and Nvidia have benefitted big-time from the AI revolution. While Microsoft is a leader in AI software—especially through its partnership with OpenAI—Nvidia powers much of the technology behind it. Its chips, known as GPUs, are essential for building large AI models used by Microsoft, Google, Meta, and others. Those chips are now filling up massive data centers around the world.
Meanwhile, Apple, once the top dog, is now in third place with a market cap of about $3.2 trillion. Its stock has dropped 17% this year as concerns grow that the iPhone giant is lagging in the AI race. Apple is set to report its latest earnings on Thursday.
So far in 2025, Nvidia is the year’s top tech performer, with a 33% gain—and it’s not slowing down. Nvidia is expected to share its next earnings report in late August.
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