Microsoft’s market value climbed past $4 trillion for the first time on 31 July, making it only the second publicly traded company, after Nvidia, to reach the milestone. The stock closed up 4.5% at $536.47, bringing the software maker’s capitalization to roughly the size of Germany’s annual economic output and eclipsing the combined worth of hundreds of smaller S&P 500 members. The fresh record followed Microsoft’s stronger-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results, which showed revenue rising 18% from a year earlier—its fastest growth in more than three years—driven by booming demand for Azure cloud services and artificial-intelligence products. The company said it plans a record $30 billion of capital spending in the current quarter to expand data-center capacity, underscoring Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s push to make Microsoft the backbone of corporate AI infrastructure. Microsoft’s surge fed a wider technology rally that added an estimated $1.1 trillion to the value of U.S. equities on 4 August, according to market-data tallies. President Donald Trump welcomed the advance, saying there would be “many more days like this,” as investors continued to concentrate bets in a handful of megacap companies seen as the main beneficiaries of the AI boom.