For the first time ever, Amazon surpasses Microsoft to become world's third-most valuable company

Amazon is now the world's third most valuable company with a market capital of $702.5 billion, surpassing Microsoft which has a market cap of $699.2 billion.

According to the New York Post, Amazon’s stock surged 2.6 percent on February 14, taking the company's market cap ahead of Microsoft for the first time.

At the moment, the only two companies ahead of Amazon are Apple, worth at $849 billion and Google parent company, Alphabet, worth at $745.1 billion. Social-networking giant holds the fifth spot with a market valuation of roughly $521.5 billion. 

The value ranking of the tech titans was stable throughout 2017, although Amazon has been on the upswing since cracking the Top 10 in the fourth quarter of 2015, points out the report.

Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, is also the richest man in the world with net worth of a whopping $105 billion. Bloomberg's Billionaire Index reports Bezos to have earned close to $6.1 billion in the first five trading days of the year.

Bezos now stands ahead of Microsoft's Bill Gates who's worth $93.3 billion and stands second on the list. The online retail giant saw a jump of close to 56 percent in its share in the year 2017.

In just five days of trading in 2018, Amazon's share had already seen a hike of 6.6 percent. Although Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, stands behind in terms of net worth, experts point at his charity funding and philanthropist projects where a chunk of his wealth is invested.

According to reports, Gates has given away shares and stocks worth nearly $60 billion in the past few decades. Combining the same with his current value of assets would skyrocket his worth to nearly $150 billion.