AI benefits boost tech giants' stock prices, with Meta and Microsoft increasing their market value by a total of $400 billion in a single day

According to Zhitong Finance APP, the stock prices of US tech giants Meta (META.US) and Microsoft (MSFT.US) surged significantly on Thursday, with a combined market value increase of $400 billion in just one day, equivalent to more than seven times the market value of the largest US bank, JP Morgan (JPM.US), or the largest retailer, Walmart (WMT.US).

Among them, Microsoft's stock price rose nearly 5%, briefly pushing the company's market value past the $4 trillion mark, making it the second company in the world to reach this milestone after Nvidia (NVDA.US). Although it slightly retreated towards the end of trading, Microsoft's closing market value still reached $3.97 trillion.

Meta also experienced a strong increase, with its stock price closing up 11.25%, just one step away from the $2 trillion market value threshold. As the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta benefited from performance growth driven by artificial intelligence, showing particularly strong results.

This wave of gains is mainly attributed to the stronger-than-expected financial reports released by both companies, as well as investors' continued optimism about growth driven by artificial intelligence (AI). From Wednesday's close to Thursday's close, Meta and Microsoft added $200 billion in market value each.

In its latest quarterly report, Microsoft disclosed that its revenue grew by 18% year-on-year, reaching $76 billion. Microsoft also announced that it will invest over $30 billion in the next three months, primarily to expand its cloud service infrastructure to support the rapid growth in AI demand.

Meta also performed well, with quarterly revenue soaring 22% year-on-year, approaching $50 billion. The company stated that its daily active user count is nearing 3.5 billion. Meta expects total expenditures in 2025 to be between $114 billion and $118 billion, most of which will be used for AI investments and the construction and operation of its global data centers.

Since the beginning of this year, several tech giants have continued to rise amid the AI wave: Nvidia's stock price has increased by 30%, Microsoft's by 27%, and Meta's by 32%.

In stark contrast, Apple's (AAPL.US) stock price has fallen by 18% this year. Although Apple was the first company in the world to surpass a market value of $1 trillion, $2 trillion, and $3 trillion, there are concerns in the market about whether its AI strategy is lagging behind competitors like Microsoft and OpenAI. Apple has traditionally adopted a "wait-and-see" strategy, but this time it may be seen as missing the AI opportunity.

Another tech giant, Alphabet (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US), has seen its stock price rise only 1.5% this year. Although Google has the third-largest cloud service globally (after Amazon (AMZN.US) and Microsoft), there are widespread concerns that the usage rate of the Google search engine is declining with the rise of generative AI like ChatGPT.

It is reported that an Apple executive testified in the Google antitrust case that traditional search volume in the Safari browser declined for the first time in April 2024. Google responded by stating that its total search queries are still continuing to grow.

As of the end of 2023, the total market value of all listed companies in the European Union is approximately $12.5 trillion, while the combined market value of these four American tech giants—Apple, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft—has reached $11.4 trillion, nearly matching the scale of the entire EU capital market