Microsoft $MSFT is an American technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, licenses, and sells software, hardware, cloud services, and AI products. It is one of the largest companies in the world by market capitalization and is primarily known for its Windows operating system and Office productivity software suite.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975, originally to develop programming languages for early personal computers. The company's first major commercial breakthrough came in 1981, when it supplied the DOS operating system for IBM $IBM's personal computer — a deal that positioned Microsoft at the center of the PC industry. Windows, introduced in 1985, became the dominant desktop operating system worldwide and remains so today. The Office suite, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, became a standard productivity platform for businesses and institutions globally.
Microsoft is organized around three principal business segments. The Productivity and Business Processes segment covers Office, LinkedIn, and Dynamics business software. The Intelligent Cloud segment is anchored by Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, which competes directly with Amazon $AMZN Web Services and Google $GOOGL Cloud. The More Personal Computing segment includes Windows licensing, Xbox gaming hardware and services, and the Bing search engine.
Azure has become one of Microsoft's fastest-growing revenue sources as enterprises move workloads off their own servers and into cloud infrastructure. The company has made artificial intelligence a central strategic priority, most visibly through its partnership with OpenAI, whose models power and a .