Microsoft briefly became the world's most valuable company in January 2024 after a surge linked to artificial-intelligence demand.
Microsoft overtook Apple in market capitalization during January 2024 trading. Investors were responding partly to Microsoft's close relationship with OpenAI and its plans to integrate generative artificial intelligence into products such as Azure, Microsoft 365, and Windows.
Microsoft's cloud-computing business, Azure, had become a major growth engine. The company also held a large enterprise software customer base, giving it multiple ways to sell AI tools and computing capacity.
The lead over Apple was not permanent: market-cap rankings fluctuate with daily share prices, currency conditions, earnings expectations, and investor sentiment. Microsoft's 2024 rise is different from NVIDIA's later AI-driven ascent, because NVIDIA supplies key graphics processors used in many AI systems rather than primarily selling enterprise software and cloud services.