Microsoft becomes second-ever $4 trillion company

Microsoft became the second-ever $4 trillion company after its shares soared on the back of better-than-expected earnings.

The software giant’s growth, its fastest in three years, was driven by its cloud-computing division as artificial intelligence-led demand for computing power soars. Nvidia, the chip designer, this month became the first to cross the $4 trillion threshold.

Meta also saw its stock jump 11% on higher-than-anticipated earnings. Boss Mark Zuckerberg is betting heavily on “superintelligence,” AI vastly more capable than humans across most domains, spending billions to achieve it: He told investors that he was doing so because “superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do from a business perspective.”