Apple and Microsoft have both crossed the $4 trillion market capitalisation mark, making Apple only the third company in history, after Nvidia and Microsoft, to reach the valuation threshold.
Apple’s surge came after its stock reached an all-time high of $269.20 before settling around $268.60, briefly pushing its market cap beyond $4 trillion.
The company’s growth has been commendable, hitting $1 trillion in 2018, $2 trillion in 2020, and $3 trillion in 2022.
Its latest increase was driven largely by strong sales of the iPhone 17 range, which analysts say is outselling previous models, particularly in China and India.
The firm is also expected to report solid fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, with notable growth anticipated in services revenue, such as App Store, iCloud, and Apple Music, and wearables, including the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Vision Pro.
Microsoft, which had briefly slipped below the mark earlier this year, rebounded strongly following its renewed agreement with OpenAI. The deal has deepened the integration of OpenAI’s GPT models across Microsoft’s Azure and Copilot tools.
According to the company, its 27% stake in OpenAI is now valued at approximately $135 billion, highlighting the scale of investor trust in the AI sector.
Azure continues to be a central driver of Microsoft’s earnings, with enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and its Microsoft 365 Copilot suite pushing growth to new levels. The company will release its quarterly report on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Nvidia continues to lead the trillion-dollar race. The chipmaker was the first to reach the $4 trillion milestone in July 2025 and is now nearing $5 trillion in valuation.
Its performance has been driven by global demand for its H100 and B200 GPUs, key components in training large-scale AI models. Nvidia’s place in the AI hardware market has made it the fastest-growing tech stock of the year.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is not far behind, trading at a market capitalisation of around $3.25 trillion. If the current growth in AI and cloud services continues, it could soon join Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and others in the $4 trillion valuation club.
