Microsoft’s market capitalization record was helped by its 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks.
Microsoft announced the $7.5 billion acquisition in September 2020 and completed it in March 2021. The deal added major game franchises, including The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, and Quake, to Microsoft’s Xbox and gaming portfolio.
The acquisition was part of a broader strategy involving Xbox consoles, Game Pass subscriptions, PC gaming, cloud services, and first-party development studios. It showed how Microsoft’s value was increasingly connected to several businesses rather than Windows software alone.
Microsoft’s market capitalization has also been driven by enterprise cloud computing and software subscriptions. The company became the second U.S. company to pass a $3 trillion market value, after Apple, during 2024 trading.