Microsoft becomes second US public company after Apple to join $2 trn club

Microsoft Corp took its place in the history books as just the second US public company to reach a $2 trillion market value, buoyed by bets its dominance in cloud computing and enterprise software will expand further in a post-coronavirus world.

Its shares rose as much as 1.2 per cent in New York on Tuesday, enough for the software company to briefly join Apple Inc. as one of only two companies trading at such a lofty value before closing pennies short of the mark at $265.51. Saudi Aramco eclipsed that threshold briefly in December 2019, but currently has a market value of about $1.9 trillion.

Since taking the reins in 2014, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has reshaped the Redmond, Washington-based company into the largest seller of cloud-computing software,