Seattle |Microsoft's cloud computing business fuelled quarterly sales and profit that topped analysts' estimates, boosted by several new deals with large corporate clients.
The company's shares rose as much as 5.1 per cent Thursday morning (early Friday AEDT) in New York, briefly pushing its valuation across $US1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) before pulling back slightly. The move nosed the software maker ahead of Apple as the world's most valuable company. The two tech giants, along with Amazon, are all within striking distance of the symbolic $US1 trillion mark as their stocks have rallied this year.
