The recent rise is because there is some sort of collaboration with Microsoft ,that is what i heard about the recent price rise.
The Microsoft partnership is non existent. A partnership happens when both sides announce it. Not a word was heard from Microsoft, so this press release from IOTA was inaccurate at best, shameless pumping of their own coin (which the devs hold a lot of) at worst. I don't like people who behave like this and prefer to invest in teams and products I can trust.