AsianFin -- Microsoft Corp. shares rose 1.66% on Tuesday, closing above the $500 mark for the first time and pushing the tech giant’s market capitalization to $3.75 trillion. The rally cements Microsoft’s position as the world’s second most valuable publicly traded company, trailing only Nvidia, which currently holds a $4 trillion valuation.

The stock surge reflects continued investor confidence in Microsoft's AI strategy, cloud growth, and enterprise software dominance, even as the broader tech sector shows signs of cooling after a prolonged rally.

Microsoft, which has aggressively integrated OpenAI technologies across its product lines, has been a major beneficiary of the generative AI boom, alongside Nvidia, whose chips power most AI workloads globally.