Microsoft Surges Past $4tn in Market Cap, Intensifying Race Among U.S. Tech Giants

Microsoft joined the exclusive club of $ 4 billions on Thursday, passing beyond the milestone after its actions jumped more than 5% on the back of strong quarterly results.

The overvoltage intensifies the current race in progress in progress among the largest American technological titans – Microsoft, Apple and, more recently, NVIDIA – to dominate the level of evaluation of the billion dollars which now serves as a decisive test of world technological supremacy.

The software giant has declared an income growth of 18% – the fastest in more than three years, almost entirely by the continuous force of its Azure Cloud Computing division. For the first time, Microsoft disclosed real figures for Azure and related cloud services, revealing that they have drawn more than $ 75 billion during the 2025 fiscal year. It is a jump to 34% compared to the previous year and underlines how Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure has become the crisis of the arrow of artificial intelligence.

With Thursday’s rally, Microsoft became the second American company to reach the brand of $ 4 Billion this year, following Nvidia, which briefly crossed the threshold earlier in June. Nvidia, whose graphic processing units (GPU) are the essential equipment behind most AI models, including those of Openai, Microsoft, Google and Meta – have seen the explosive investors of investor demand in the middle of an industry rush to build data centers and evolve the capacity of AI. Its stock increased by only 33% in 2025 only.

Apple, once the undisputed leader of the billion dollar club and the first company to cross the threshold of $ 1 Billion in 2018, now follows Microsoft and Nvidia. Apple’s market capitalization is around 3.2 dollars, after a 17% drop in the share of its shares this year. The concerns of investors have climbed on Apple’s slow thrust in a generative AI, the criticisms suggesting that the company has lagged behind while rivals like Microsoft and Nvidia harm a first month advantage.

Analysts say that Apple has failed to match the pace of its peers in the construction or acquisition of advanced AI capabilities. While rivals like Microsoft and Google have paid tens of billions in AI research, cloud infrastructure and benchmark acquisitions, Apple has remained with tight lips, offering only incremental updates to Siri and vague promises thanks to its “Apple Intelligence” initiative.

“The incomplete AI strategy is still the biggest overhang, but we believe that Apple is still about 1.5 years old to perform a convincing solution,” TD Cowen analyst Krish Sankar wrote on Monday. He recommends buying the actions.

Fierce competition between these American technology giants has become one of the determining accounts of the global financial markets. For more than a year, Microsoft and Apple exchanged places as the most precious public society in the world. Then came Nvidia, whose climb rewritten the traditional order by transforming the manufacture of sieve into a central pillar of the EC economy.

The three companies are not only fighting for the confidence of investors, but are deeply linked to the IA race – Microsoft has invested billions in Openai and continues to integrate AI into its product suite; Nvidia provides the equipment that makes the AI possible; And Apple, although quieter, should deploy AI features on its devices and operating systems.

Apple should publish its quarterly results later Thursday, and the markets are watching closely for the signals on its AI roadmap. A high performance could help Apple resume the field, but as it is, Microsoft and Nvidia establish pace on a market increasingly dominated by the cloud, flea and artificial intelligence.

While these companies compete for the position in the stratosphere of $ 4 billions, the battle is no longer just a question of size – it is now relevance in the next era of technology. And for the moment, companies that build tools and infrastructure for AI seem to have the upper hand.