Microsoft first joined the group of companies valued above $1 trillion in 2019.
Microsoft crossed the $1 trillion market-capitalization threshold during trading on April 25, 2019. The company’s stock had risen as investors responded to strong growth in cloud computing, especially Azure, as well as continuing demand for software, enterprise services, and subscriptions.
This valuation measures the market’s combined value of Microsoft’s publicly traded shares. It is different from revenue, profit, or the company’s book value. Microsoft had been founded decades earlier as a personal-computer software company, but its later transformation into a cloud and subscription business was central to its renewed market leadership.
Apple became the first public company to reach $1 trillion in 2018, and Amazon also crossed the mark that year. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, passed it in 2020. Microsoft subsequently became one of the companies to reach multiple-trillion-dollar valuations.