A rally in Microsoft stock on Wednesday helped lift the company’s market capitalization back above $2 trillion, rejoining tech peer Apple.
Shares were up 1% at $270.12, giving the tech giant a valuation of $2.01 trillion. That followed a 4% rally Tuesday after Microsoft announced its search engine Bing would integrate artificial intelligence from ChatGPT parent OpenAI. It will also bring an AI feature to its Microsoft Edge browser system.
Microsoft first reached a $2 trillion market capitalization in June of 2021, making it only the second publicly traded company in the US to join the club.
But last year’s bear market hammered the tech sector especially hard amid aggressive rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.
The central bank’s slower pace of tightening has fueled a stock market rally more recently, while the rise of ChatGPT has spurred investor excitement over the future of artificial intelligence, lifting a swathe of AI-related stocks.
Microsoft in particular is poised to be a top beneficiary of ChatGPT, as the tech behemoth last month reportedly invested $10 billion in parent company OpenAI.
Meanwhile, Google is seeing an opposite landscape since announcing an artificial intelligence chatbox, entitled Bard AI.
Shares of parent-company Alphabet sank as much as 8% Wednesday, after its ad for Bard showed the chatbot giving an inaccurate answer.