Microsoft has long been one of the most powerful tech companies in the world.
With its products like Windows, and also Office, and its cloud computing offerings and a lot of others, the company co-founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen has never been short of innovation and ideas. And under Satya Nadella, the only way Microsoft is heading, is up.
And this time, Microsoft hits $2 trillion market valuation.
If getting to two trillion dollars is not already an astonishing feat, it should be noted that Microsoft just took over 2 years for its journey from $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
Apple was the first publicly-traded American company with a market cap of over $2 trillion.
Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco has previously passed this milestone, but at this time, its valuation is under that mark.
Read: Apple, The First U.S. Company With $2 Trillion Market Capitalization
Microsoft share prices have climbed 64% since March 2020, showing how the company’s products, including Teams, Office, Windows, and Azure cloud offerings have helped the world adapt to work-from-home culture during the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic.
Between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2020, Microsoft's commercial cloud revenue, which primarily comes from Office 365 (later known as Microsoft 365), Dynamics, and Azure, rose from $2.8 billion to $51.7 billion.
That astounding expansion was fed by big partnerships, investments, and acquisitions. All of them boosted its total revenue from $86.8 billion in 2014 to $143 billion in 2020.
Microsoft also has plans to allow users to run their entire Windows PC experience on a per-user basis on the Azure cloud service.
What's more, Microsoft is also looking for more growth from newer product initiatives, especially from the increased integration of Teams.
And those exclude Microsoft's gaming business and its augmented reality business.
Reaching $2 trillion market capitalization is a milestone for Microsoft, which comes just ahead of its unveil of the next version of Windows.
The market's expectation, and record revenue, have fueled its performance in the stock market.
Under Nadella’s leadership, the company has thrived in the past few years.
Nadella became Microsoft's third CEO in February 2014, when the company was worth just over $300 billion.
At the time, Microsoft was struggling to integrate Nokia's smartphone unit in a desperate bid to save its Windows Phone OS. At that time, Microsoft also had issues with Its Windows and Office due to their uneven upgrade cycles,
When Nadella was first appointed as CEO, Microsoft had fallen behind the tech curve under Nadella's predecessor Steve Ballmer, who infamously proclaimed there was "no chance" Apple's iPhone would ever succeed.
When Nadella took the helm, he introduced a fresh "mobile-first, cloud-first" approach.
Nadella ditched Windows Phone, knowing that it could never compete with Android or iOS, and developed mobile apps for those two competitors instead. Nadella also transformed Office's desktop software into cloud-based services, which locked in users with subscriptions, and expanded Azure into the world's second-largest cloud infrastructure platform after Amazon's AWS.
Nadella's approach clearly paid off.
With Nadella, Microsoft is no longer in the danger of falling behind the tech curve. Nadella has given it the momentum needed to be ahead of the curve, or even control it.