The $800 billion club has just got bigger; Microsoft joins Apple, Amazon & Alphabet

Microsoft closed up 2.17 per cent on Thursday, with market capitalisation of the software giant breaching the $800 billion mark for the first time ever.

Apple, Amazon and Alphabet (Google) now command a higher m-cap than Microsoft.

With a valuation of $951 billion, technology giant Apple leads the race to become the world's first trillion-dollar company.

Amazon and Alphabet have market capitalisation of $865.84 billion and $826.10 billion, respectively. Microsoft settled the day with market cap above the $800 billion level for the first time.

Apple settled 1.72 per cent up at $191.11 in the previous trading session while Amazon closed 2.4 per cent higher at $1,796.62. Google rose 2.5 per cent to $1,201.26.

Amazon leads in terms of year-to-date performance, up 53.6 per cent, with Microsoft a distant second at 21.8 per cent, Google (14 per cent) and Apple (12.9 per cent).

Microsoft Corp on Thursday introduced a free tier of its workplace collaboration software Teams to better compete against rival Slack Technologies in a market that analysts say is the main battleground in the world of enterprise software.

Microsoft has been up against Slack since introducing Teams in early 2017. The product is used by 200,000 organisations, the company said in March. Slack is believed to be used by 70,000 paying organisations.

Slack, Microsoft and Alphabet's Google, Cisco Systems, Facebook and Atlassian Corp have all come out with products in the fast-growing workplace collaboration market.

The market is forecast to be worth $3.2 billion by 2021, according to research firm IDC.