Seattle: US tech giant Microsoft saw its market capitalization exceed the $4 trillion threshold in after-hours trading Wednesday as the firm's financial results exceeded market expectations in the April-June quarter, driven by strong growth in revenue from Azure and other cloud services. The stock price of Microsoft rose 8.28% to $555.74 in after-hours trading.

According to Anadolu Agency, if the rally continues Thursday, Microsoft would become the second company after Nvidia to exceed a $4 trillion valuation. The tech firm's net income rose to $27.23 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ending June 30, up 24% from $22.04 billion a year ago, as revealed in the company's financial results released Wednesday. Microsoft's revenue climbed 18% in the same period to $76.44 billion, up from $64.7 billion a year earlier, surpassing market expectations.

The company's earnings per share increased 24% on an annual basis to $3.65 in the April-June period. Microsoft's revenue from server products and cloud services increased 27%, driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 39%. Revenue from the company's Productivity and Business Processes sector, which includes LinkedIn and Office productivity software, was $33.11 billion, marking an increase of 16% compared to a year ago. The More Personal Computing unit, which encompasses video games, gadgets, Windows, and search advertising, brought in $13.45 billion, showing a growth of 9%.

During the quarter, Microsoft reported other expenses of $1.71 billion, which includes known losses on equity method investments such as OpenAI. In the previous quarter, there were $623 million in other expenses.