Microsoft Corporation

What does Microsoft own?
Microsoft owns a portfolio of technology brands including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Windows, Xbox, LinkedIn (acquired 2016 for $26.2 billion), GitHub (acquired 2018 for $7.5 billion), and Activision Blizzard gaming franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush (acquired 2023 for $69 billion). The company also owns Minecraft, Skype, Bing, Surface, and Dynamics 365.

Is Microsoft publicly traded?
Yes, Microsoft Corporation is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol MSFT. The company has been publicly traded since its IPO on March 13, 1986, at $21 per share. It is consistently one of the world's most valuable companies by market capitalization, with a market cap exceeding $3 trillion as of mid-2026.

Who founded Microsoft?
Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The childhood friends developed a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800 microcomputer. Gates served as CEO until 2000, when Steve Ballmer succeeded him. Satya Nadella became CEO in February 2014.

Where is Microsoft headquartered?
Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA. The company moved to Redmond in 1986 after relocating from Bellevue, Washington, where it had been based since 1979. The Redmond campus spans over 500 acres and houses executive leadership, research facilities, and key business units.

How many brands does Microsoft own?
Microsoft owns approximately 15 major brands including Microsoft 365, Azure, Windows, Xbox, LinkedIn, GitHub, Microsoft Teams, Copilot, Dynamics 365, Surface, Minecraft, Skype, Bing, and Activision Blizzard franchises (Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush). These brands serve enterprise, consumer, and developer markets globally.

Who owns Microsoft?
Microsoft is publicly owned with no controlling shareholder. Ownership is distributed among institutional investors including Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street Global Advisors. Bill Gates has significantly reduced his stake through philanthropy and share sales. CEO Satya Nadella holds a meaningful ownership position through equity compensation.

What is Microsoft's revenue?
Microsoft reported revenue of $331.8 billion for fiscal year 2026 (ended June 30, 2026), up 18% from $281.7 billion in FY2025. Operating income was $155.2 billion, up 21%. Net income was $133.7 billion, up 31% on a GAAP basis. Microsoft Cloud revenue surpassed $214 billion, growing 27%.

What is the Microsoft OpenAI partnership?
Microsoft has invested approximately $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, making it OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider through Azure. The partnership integrates OpenAI's GPT models into Microsoft products through the Copilot AI assistant. In FY2026, Microsoft's investment in OpenAI generated $4.96 billion in net gains, reversing $3.62 billion in losses from FY2025. Regulators in the EU and UK have examined whether the relationship constitutes a de facto merger.

Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The two childhood friends developed a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800 microcomputer, which was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine. The company was originally called Micro-Soft, a contraction of microcomputer and software. It incorporated as Microsoft Corporation in 1981.

The company relocated to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979 and to its current headquarters in Redmond in 1986. The move to the Seattle area placed Microsoft near Gates's hometown and established the Pacific Northwest as a major technology hub.

Microsoft's pivotal business deal came in 1980 when IBM selected the company to provide an operating system for its first personal computer. Microsoft did not have an operating system ready, so it acquired the rights to QDOS (86-DOS) from Seattle Computer Products for approximately $50,000, adapted it, and licensed it to IBM as MS-DOS. The critical detail was that Microsoft retained the right to license MS-DOS to other manufacturers. When PC clones flooded the market in the 1980s, every clone maker needed MS-DOS, and Microsoft collected royalties on each sale. This single arrangement generated billions in revenue and made Microsoft the dominant software company of the PC era.

Microsoft went public on March 13, 1986, at $21 per share. The IPO made Gates and Allen instant millionaires and billionaires on paper. The stock split multiple times in subsequent years, and Microsoft became one of the most valuable companies in the world during the 1990s.

Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985, introducing a graphical user interface for MS-DOS. Windows 3.0 (1990) and Windows 3.1 (1992) brought commercial success. Windows 95, launched on August 24, 1995, was a cultural event. The launch featured the Rolling Stones song Start Me Up in marketing campaigns and drew consumers to retail stores at midnight. Windows 95 introduced the Start button, taskbar, and 32-bit computing to mainstream users. Internet Explorer was included with Windows 95, which would later become the basis for antitrust litigation.

Microsoft Office launched in 1990, bundling Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Office quickly displaced competitors like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 to become the standard productivity suite in corporate environments. Microsoft expanded into enterprise software with Windows NT (1993), Windows Server, and SQL Server, building a parallel business serving corporate IT departments.

The company entered gaming with the original Xbox console in 2001, competing against Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox 360 (2005) was more successful, but Microsoft lost billions on hardware subsidies in the early years of the Xbox program. The Xbox business became profitable under later leadership.

The US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998, alleging that the company illegally bundled Internet Explorer with Windows to undermine Netscape. In 2000, a federal judge ordered the breakup of Microsoft into two companies. An appeals court overturned the breakup order in 2001 but upheld the finding that Microsoft had violated antitrust law. The case was settled in 2001 with a consent decree requiring Microsoft to share APIs with third parties and appoint a panel to monitor compliance. European regulators pursued separate antitrust cases against Microsoft through the 2000s, resulting in fines totaling over EUR 2 billion.

Steve Ballmer succeeded Gates as CEO in January 2000. Under Ballmer, Microsoft maintained its dominance in enterprise software but missed key transitions in mobile computing, search, and cloud. The company launched Windows Vista (2007) to poor reception, struggled with Windows Phone against iOS and Android, and watched Amazon Web Services establish an early lead in cloud computing. Ballmer's tenure saw the successful launch of Microsoft Azure (2010) and the acquisition of Skype (2011, $8.5 billion), but also the failed acquisition of Nokia's devices business (2013, $7.2 billion), which resulted in massive write-downs.

Satya Nadella became CEO in February 2014, succeeding Ballmer. Nadella's appointment marked a strategic pivot. He shifted Microsoft's focus from a Windows-first philosophy to a cloud-first, mobile-first strategy. Under Nadella, Microsoft embraced open-source software, partnered with competitors including Salesforce and Red Hat, and invested heavily in Azure to compete with AWS.

Key acquisitions under Nadella include LinkedIn ($26.2 billion, 2016), GitHub ($7.5 billion, 2018), and Activision Blizzard ($69 billion, 2023). The Activision Blizzard acquisition was the largest gaming deal in history and brought franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush into Microsoft's portfolio. The deal faced regulatory challenges from the FTC and UK Competition and Markets Authority but was completed in October 2023 after Microsoft restructured the transaction to transfer cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft.

Microsoft's investment in OpenAI began in 2019 with a $1 billion commitment. In January 2023, Microsoft extended the partnership with a reported additional $10 billion investment, bringing its total commitment to approximately $13 billion. The deal gave Microsoft exclusive cloud provider rights for OpenAI and integrated OpenAI's models into Microsoft products through the Copilot brand. In FY2026, Microsoft's investment in OpenAI generated net gains of $4.96 billion, reversing the $3.62 billion in losses recorded in FY2025.

In Q4 FY2026 (quarter ended June 30, 2026), Microsoft reported revenue of $90.0 billion, up 18%. Net income was $35.8 billion, up 31% on a GAAP basis. Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $59.3 billion in the quarter, growing 27%. The Intelligent Cloud segment generated $39.3 billion in Q4 revenue, up 32%. Productivity and Business Processes contributed $37.8 billion, up 14%. More Personal Computing declined 4% to $12.9 billion, reflecting weakness in the PC market.

For FY2027, Microsoft guided to continued double-digit revenue and operating income growth, with capital expenditures expected to increase year-over-year due to AI infrastructure demand.

Microsoft has committed to becoming carbon negative by 2030, meaning the company will remove more carbon from the environment than it emits. The company also aims to remove all historical carbon emissions it has produced since its founding by 2050. Microsoft has been carbon neutral in its operations since 2012.

The company's $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund invests in carbon reduction technologies and sustainable solutions. Microsoft has implemented internal carbon fees that charge business units for their emissions, creating a financial incentive for reduction. The company reports progress against these targets annually in its sustainability report.

Microsoft's water strategy targets becoming water positive by 2030, replenishing more water than it consumes in water-stressed regions. The company has implemented water conservation technologies in data centers, including direct-to-chip cooling systems.

In AI ethics, Microsoft has published six core principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. The company operates an AI ethics review board and publishes responsible AI guidelines. However, the rapid deployment of Copilot features has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and researchers who argue that Microsoft is prioritizing speed over safety.

A significant tension exists between Microsoft's carbon reduction commitments and its AI infrastructure expansion. Data center construction for AI workloads requires enormous energy and water consumption. Microsoft acknowledged in its FY2025 sustainability report that its Scope 3 emissions increased due to data center construction, partially offsetting progress in operational emissions. The company is not a Certified B Corporation.

Microsoft faces significant regulatory scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched a broad antitrust investigation in November 2024, described as the widest probe since the 1990s. The investigation examines Microsoft's cloud computing practices, software licensing models, and alleged bundling of Microsoft Teams with Office 365. The FTC investigation covers operations from 2016 through 2025.

In June 2024, the European Commission announced its preliminary view that Microsoft had violated antitrust law by bundling Teams with Office 365, giving Teams a distribution advantage over competitors. Microsoft subsequently unbundled Teams from Office 365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland in October 2023, but the EC investigation continues.

Cybersecurity failures have drawn separate regulatory attention. In July 2023, Chinese state-sponsored hackers accessed email accounts of U.S. State Department and Commerce Department officials through Microsoft's cloud services. The Cyber Safety Review Board, a U.S. government body, investigated the incident and concluded that Microsoft's security culture was inadequate and required an overhaul. In January 2024, Kremlin-linked hackers accessed emails of senior Microsoft executives, leading to a broader breach of corporate systems.

In September 2025, Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the FTC calling for investigation of Microsoft's cybersecurity practices, citing the company's role in the 2024 Ascension Health ransomware attack that affected 5.6 million people. Wyden criticized Microsoft for continuing to support vulnerable RC4 encryption technology in Windows.

Microsoft has also faced scrutiny over its relationship with OpenAI. Regulators in the EU and UK have examined whether Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI constitutes a de facto merger that should be reviewed under competition law. The UK Competition and Markets Authority considered but ultimately did not refer the partnership for a full merger investigation. The FTC has also reportedly examined the OpenAI relationship as part of its broader antitrust probe.

Labor controversies include the July 2025 layoffs of approximately 9,000 employees and the July 2026 cuts of 4,800 additional employees across sales, consulting, and Xbox divisions. Microsoft's first voluntary retirement program in 2026 also led to departures. The company's total headcount fell by 5,000 to 223,000 in FY2026, the first decline in a decade. CFO Amy Hood indicated headcount would continue to shrink in FY2027.