In a remarkable feat, Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook, achieved a historic market capitalization of over $1 trillion on Wednesday, closing up over 1% at $390 per share amidst a record-breaking rally.
This marks Meta’s return to the trillion-dollar club, having last surpassed this milestone in 2021. At that time, it was still operating under the name Facebook. Notably, September 2021 witnessed Meta’s market cap approaching $1.1 trillion for the first time.
The surge in Meta’s stock performance is a continuation of its impressive run in the past year, where it experienced an almost 200% surge. CEO Mark Zuckerberg played a pivotal role in this turnaround by implementing cost-cutting measures that led to more than 20,000 job cuts. In response to the stock hitting a six-year low in 2022, Zuckerberg termed 2023 as a “year of efficiency.”
On Wednesday, Meta’s shares peaked at approximately $396 during intraday trading, closing the day with a year-to-date increase of over 10%.
Investors are displaying strong confidence in Meta’s trajectory, particularly in its pursuit of a dominant position in artificial intelligence (AI). Last week, Zuckerberg announced Meta’s plans to acquire 350,000 H100 graphics cards from Nvidia by the year’s end, alongside a substantial investment of billions of dollars in various AI-related initiatives.
Meta is slated to report its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on February 1, providing further insights into its financial performance.
In a parallel development on the same day, Microsoft briefly achieved a market cap milestone by surpassing $3 trillion in value, albeit relinquishing its status as the world’s most valuable public company. This title had recently been claimed by Apple, which, in turn, reclaimed its top spot.
