Yesterday Microsoft joined a very exclusive club of companies — those with a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion (with a T).
Under CEO Satya Nadella Microsoft has thrived as the software giant has grown its cloud computing division — Azure — while maintaining its position as the de facto operating system of choice for most PC users and building collaborative workspace Teams in record time. Microsoft joins Apple in the club, which first broke the milestone last August.
Mega tech vs. big tech
We're running out of adjectives to describe how enormous these companies are, and it might pay to start making vague distinctions between "big tech" and "mega tech". Companies such as Snapchat, Twitter or Netflix could be described as "big tech" — but even combined the market value of those 3 is less than $400bn, or one-fifth of what Microsoft is now worth.
Is regulation coming?
This week six bills passed through the US House of Representatives. The legislation approved seeks to give government agencies a greater ability to block potentially anti-competitive acquisitions as well as prosecute big tech when they limit the scope of other parties on their platforms to do business. Passing the House is one hurdle down, but the debates exposed how each party in the US is focused on quite different issues when it comes to reining in big tech.
Investors clearly don't expect regulation to put a dampener on Microsoft's profits any time soon, Microsoft's share price went up a few % this week after the unveiling of Windows 11, which was what put it over the $2tn mark.
