Microsoft
Headquarters
Redmond, WAFounded
1975CEO / Founder
Satya NadellaEmployees
10000+Funding
PublicStock
MSFTProducts
9 products listedAvg. AI Score
7.8/10Website
www.microsoft.com/
Profile updated
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, later relocating its headquarters to Redmond, Washington. The company began as a developer of programming languages and operating systems, releasing MS-DOS in 1981 and Windows in 1985, and has since grown into one of the largest technology companies in the world by revenue and market capitalization.
Microsoft's product portfolio spans operating systems (Windows), productivity software (Microsoft 365, including Word, Excel, and Teams), cloud computing (Azure), gaming (Xbox and Activision Blizzard, acquired in 2023), professional networking (LinkedIn, acquired in 2016), and developer tools (GitHub, acquired in 2018). The company has invested heavily in artificial intelligence, including a multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI and the integration of Copilot AI features across its product lines. Its customers span consumers, small businesses, and large enterprises across nearly every industry.
Microsoft has traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker MSFT since its 1986 initial public offering. The company employs more than 220,000 people globally and reported annual revenue exceeding $245 billion for fiscal year 2024. Satya Nadella has served as CEO since 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Microsoft
All products by Microsoft reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
Interactive data visualization and business intelligence for the Microsoft ecosystem
Automate repetitive tasks and workflows across your apps
Microsoft's managed cloud service for OpenAI's GPT and AI models
No-code platform for building custom AI chatbots and conversational experiences
AI-powered ambient clinical documentation for healthcare providers
Graphic design and image editing powered by AI
Microsoft's AI assistant for everyday tasks and questions
Chat, meetings, calling, and file sharing integrated with Microsoft 365
Multi-agent framework for building LLM-powered collaborative AI workflows
How Our Review Panel Scores Microsoft
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Microsoft's products on their own terms. They disagreed by 1.3 points — The Skeptic was the hardest to convince, The Domain Strategist the most positive.
Averaged across 9 reviewed products in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Microsoft competes with, and how they differ.
Competes across the full Microsoft stack: Gemini against Copilot, Google Workspace against Microsoft 365 and Teams, and Google Cloud with Vertex AI against Azure OpenAI Service. Its distribution leans on consumer search and Android rather than enterprise licensing agreements.
6 products reviewed on TopReviewed
The largest cloud infrastructure provider, ahead of Azure; Bedrock counters Azure OpenAI Service with a multi-model catalog (Anthropic, Meta, Mistral) instead of a single flagship model partner.
2 products reviewed on TopReviewed
Partner turned rival: Microsoft resells OpenAI models through Azure OpenAI Service, yet ChatGPT competes directly with Microsoft Copilot for consumer and enterprise assistant seats, and the OpenAI API competes with Azure for developer spend.
2 products reviewed on TopReviewed
Frontier-model rival to Azure OpenAI Service; Claude is distributed mainly through AWS and Google Cloud and targets the same enterprise assistant, coding, and API workloads with a safety-forward positioning.
3 products reviewed on TopReviewed
Competes for enterprise AI agent budgets: Agentforce against Microsoft Copilot Studio and Slack against Teams. Salesforce anchors its agents in CRM data, while Microsoft anchors on the Microsoft 365 productivity graph.
2 products reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in Microsoft's history, with sources.
- Partnership
OpenAI restructures; Microsoft holds 27 percent stake
OpenAI completed its restructuring into a public benefit corporation, with Microsoft holding a stake of about 27 percent valued at roughly $135 billion after more than $13 billion invested since 2019.
aljazeera.com - Acquisition
Completes $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard
Largest deal in Microsoft history, closed after clearance from the UK Competition and Markets Authority; brought Call of Duty, Diablo and Overwatch into Xbox.
cnbc.com - Launch
Unveils Microsoft 365 Copilot
AI assistant embedded across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams; general availability for enterprises followed on November 1, 2023 at $30 per user per month.
pcguide.com - Partnership
Extends OpenAI partnership with multibillion-dollar investment
Third phase of the partnership, reported at around $10 billion, bringing total Microsoft commitments to roughly $13 billion since 2019.
techcrunch.com - Launch
GitHub Copilot becomes generally available
The Codex-powered AI pair programmer left technical preview at $10 per month, free for verified students and maintainers of popular open-source projects.
github.blog - Acquisition
Agrees to acquire Nuance for $19.7 billion
All-cash deal at $56 per share for the clinical voice and ambient AI provider behind DAX; the acquisition closed in March 2022 and anchored the healthcare AI push.
healthcaredive.com - Partnership
Invests $1 billion in OpenAI
Multiyear partnership making Azure the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI, aimed at building AGI-scale supercomputing on Azure.
news.microsoft.com - Acquisition
Acquires GitHub for $7.5 billion
Stock deal for the development platform then used by 28 million developers; GitHub continued to operate independently under CEO Nat Friedman.
news.microsoft.com - Acquisition
Acquires LinkedIn for $26.2 billion
All-cash deal at $196 per share, the largest acquisition in company history at the time; LinkedIn kept its brand with CEO Jeff Weiner reporting to Satya Nadella.
news.microsoft.com - Milestone
Initial public offering at $21 per share
Shares priced at $21 closed the first day at $27.75, raising $61 million and valuing Microsoft at more than $500 million.
historylink.org - Founded
Microsoft founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to write software for the Altair 8800; the company licensed MS-DOS to IBM in 1981 and later settled in Redmond, Washington.
thestreet.com
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