Microsoft (📝NASDAQ: MSFT) is an American technology company founded in 1975 by 📝Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It sells operating systems (Windows), productivity and collaboration software (Microsoft 365 and 📝Microsoft Teams), cloud infrastructure (Azure), search and AI assistants (📝Bing and 📝Copilot), developer tools, and gaming (Xbox) to consumers, businesses, and governments. It also owns 📝LinkedIn and 📝GitHub.
Microsoft's early growth came from licensing MS-DOS to 📝IBM in 1981 and from Windows' dominance of personal computing through the 1990s, a position that led to the landmark United States v. Microsoft antitrust case. Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014 and reoriented the company around cloud services and subscriptions, adding LinkedIn (2016), GitHub (2018), and 📝Activision Blizzard (2023) through acquisition. Since 2019 it has been the principal investor in and cloud provider to 📝OpenAI; after OpenAI's October 2025 recapitalization, Microsoft holds roughly 27% of its for-profit entity. In 2024 it hired 📝Mustafa Suleyman to lead its consumer AI division, Microsoft AI. It is counted among the Big Five U.S. technology companies alongside 📝Alphabet, 📝Amazon, 📝Apple, and 📝Meta.