The surge comes following announced investments in AI after the company laid off thousands of workers earlier this month.Microsoft is now the second company ever to surpass $4 trillion in market valuation, following artificial intelligence giant Nvidia.Microsoft, which is traded under the ticker “MSFT”, is continuing to surge and as of noon in New York City (16:00 GMT) on Thursday, it is up 4.6 percent from the market open.The technology behemoth said it will spend $30bn in capital spending for the first quarter of the current fiscal year to meet soaring artificial intelligence (AI) demand. Microsoft also reported booming sales in its Azure cloud computing business on Wednesday.“It is in the process of becoming more of a cloud infrastructure business and a leader in enterprise AI, doing so very profitably and cash generatively despite the heavy AI capital expenditures,” said Gerrit Smit, lead portfolio manager, Stonehage Fleming Global Best Ideas Equity Fund.Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft first cracked the $1 trillion mark in April 2019.Its move to $3 trillion was more measured than that of technology giants Nvidia and Apple, with AI-bellwether Nvidia tripling its value in just about a year and clinching the $4 trillion milestone before any other company on July 9.In its earnings report, revenue topped $76.4bn.‘Slam-dunk’“This was a slam-dunk quarter for MSFT [Microsoft] with cloud and AI driving significant business transformation across every sector and industry as the company continues to capitali …
