Microsoft Stocks Add Remarkable One-Day Gain Of Nearly $450B, Setting New Wall Street Record

Microsoft added nearly $450 billion in market value in a single trading session on Thursday, marking the largest one-day gain by any company in stock market history, according to data disclosed by Reuters.

Shares of the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant closed up more than 15%, pushing its market capitalisation to $3.35 trillion. The jump eclipsed the previous record one-day gain of $441 billion set by Nvidia on April 9, 2025, based on LSEG data.

The rally followed Microsoft’s release of stronger-than-expected quarterly results, in which the company forecast robust growth for its Azure cloud business and pointed to continued strong cash generation. The figures helped calm investor worries that Microsoft’s heavy spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure was not translating into returns.

Thursday’s surge represents a sharp reversal for a stock that had lagged behind its peers this year. Microsoft had been one of the worst performers among the so-called Magnificent Seven technology companies, with its shares down more than 18% as of Wednesday’s close.

Microsoft said it expects Azure to grow by 45% on a constant-currency basis in its fiscal first quarter of 2027, above the 40.92% growth analysts had projected, according to Visible Alpha data. The company also confirmed its capital expenditure plans remain unchanged, with spending projected at $50 billion for the fiscal first quarter of 2027 and $175 billion for the full 2026 calendar year.

At least nine brokerages raised their price targets on Microsoft following the results, bringing the average target to $560.90, according to the report by Reuters.

The results mark a milestone in Microsoft’s years-long, large-scale bet on AI infrastructure. The company previously disclosed plans to spend $30 billion on AI-powered cloud expansion in the third quarter of 2025 alone, a figure that drew scrutiny from analysts questioning whether demand would catch up with the pace of investment. Microsoft has poured tens of billions of dollars annually into AI and cloud infrastructure since partnering with OpenAI in 2019, ramping up further after the late-2022 launch of ChatGPT.

The strong results come weeks after Microsoft announced it was cutting about 2.1% of its global workforce, part of a broader wave of job reductions across the technology sector even as AI spending increased.

Microsoft has also been expanding beyond cloud infrastructure into enterprise AI services. Earlier this month, it unveiled Microsoft Frontier Company, a new unit backed by $2.5 billion in funding to help large businesses adopt AI tools. The unit’s first clients include Unilever and Novo Nordisk.