#Microsoft second US company to reach $2 trillion valuation

Microsoft is joining one of the most exclusive clubs in the world.

The tech giant has become the second US company ever to reach the lofty valuation of $2 trillion.

Apple was the first American company to reach that point and now boasts a market cap of about $2.2 trillion.

Oil company Saudi Aramco, which went public in 2019, surpassed a $2 trillion market cap on its second day of trading, but has since fallen slightly under the mark.

Shares of Microsoft reached a fresh all-time high of $266.83 per share on Wednesday, before paring back some of those gains.

The company passed a valuation of $1 trillion just over two years ago.

Microsoft has gotten a boost over the past 16 months from the COVID-19 pandemic.

As people spent more time at home and on devices, demand for Microsoft’s cloud-computing services, gaming system and computers surged.

Since March 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, Microsoft’s stock has soared more than 64 percent.

The company said in April that it posted revenue of $41.71 billion in its fiscal third-quarter, up 19 percent from a year prior. That’s the biggest quarterly sales increase the company has seen since 2018.

“Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down,” CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement at the time. “We are building the cloud for the next decade, expanding our addressable market and innovating across every layer of the tech stack to help our customers be resilient and transform.”

Apple became the first US company to surpass a $2 trillion valuation in August, 2019.

Other big tech companies are close on Microsoft’s heels. Amazon’s market cap hit $1.74 trillion on Wednesday, and Google parent Alphabet’s stood at $1.67 trillion.