Breaking: Microsoft plans up to $190B in 2026 capital spendingMicrosoft 365 Copilot passes 20M paid seatsAzure grows ~40% year over yearAI business hits ~$37B annualized run rate, up 123%Q3 FY2026 revenue $82.89B, up 18%Build 2026: Project Solara & Copilot super app unveiledBreaking: Microsoft plans up to $190B in 2026 capital spendingMicrosoft 365 Copilot passes 20M paid seatsAzure grows ~40% year over yearAI business hits ~$37B annualized run rate, up 123%Q3 FY2026 revenue $82.89B, up 18%Build 2026: Project Solara & Copilot super app unveiled
Company Dossier · Redmond, Washington · Est. 1975
Fig. 1 - The four-color Microsoft mark. Photographed against a plain field, as a portrait rather than a backdrop, so the object can speak for itself.
Microsoft
A two-person software startup founded in 1975 that became core infrastructure for the modern world - and is now rebuilding itself, again, around artificial intelligence.
Software, cloud and AI - the plumbing behind billions of daily tasks.
Microsoft builds the tools people use to work, learn and play. That starts with the obvious - Windows on the desktop and the Microsoft 365 suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams - but the center of gravity has moved. Today the company's engine is Azure, a global cloud platform that rents computing power, storage and AI services to organizations of every size.
Layered on top of all of it is Copilot, Microsoft's generative-AI assistant. It now lives inside Windows, Office, GitHub and Azure, and the company says weekly engagement has climbed to roughly the level of Outlook - a sign it is becoming a daily habit rather than a novelty.
The reach is unusually broad for one company. Microsoft owns GitHub, where much of the world's software is written; LinkedIn, the largest professional network; and, after a $68.7 billion deal, Activision Blizzard, which turned Xbox into one of the biggest names in gaming. Add Surface hardware, Dynamics business apps and the Bing search engine and you have a company that touches consumers, developers, enterprises and governments at once.
The through-line is simple: Microsoft prefers to sell platforms other people build on, then take a share of the activity that follows.
Weekly engagement is now at the same level as Outlook, as more and more users make Copilot a habit.
Billions of consumers run Windows, Office and Xbox. The overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 companies rely on Microsoft software and cloud. Its customers span individuals, small businesses, global enterprises, developers, schools and public-sector agencies - a rare spread across nearly every computing segment at once.
The problems it solves
Microsoft removes the need for organizations to run their own data centers (Azure), gives teams a common set of productivity and collaboration tools (Microsoft 365), lets developers host and ship code (GitHub), and now automates routine knowledge work through AI (Copilot). In short: it turns expensive, specialized infrastructure into something you can subscribe to.
Business Model
How The Money Moves
Three segments, increasingly weighted toward recurring cloud revenue.
Microsoft reports across Productivity & Business Processes (Microsoft 365, LinkedIn, Dynamics), Intelligent Cloud (Azure, servers, enterprise services) and More Personal Computing (Windows, devices, gaming, search). The shift from one-time licenses to subscriptions and cloud consumption has made revenue steadier and, lately, faster-growing.
Azure growth
~40% YoY
Microsoft Cloud
$54.5B / qtr, +29%
AI run-rate
~$37B, +123%
Total revenue
$82.9B / qtr, +18%
Figures approximate, fiscal Q3 2026 as reported in public earnings coverage. Bar lengths are illustrative, not to a common scale.
The Edge
How It Differs From Rivals
Amazon and Google are bigger in pure cloud infrastructure in some measures; Apple and Google own more of the phone in your pocket. What sets Microsoft apart is the bundle: it is the only company that pairs the dominant desktop OS, the default enterprise productivity suite, a top-three cloud, the world's largest code host and a major gaming business - and it can wire AI through all of them at once.
Its early, deep partnership with OpenAI gave it a head start embedding frontier models into products people already open every morning. Where competitors sell AI as a destination, Microsoft mostly sells it as a feature of tools you're already using - which is why usage, not marketing, has driven Copilot's growth.
The Portfolio
Products & Services
Since 1985
Windows
The world's most widely used desktop operating system, powering the majority of PCs.
Since 1990
Microsoft 365
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and OneDrive, delivered on subscription.
Since 2010
Azure
Global cloud for compute, storage, databases and AI - Microsoft's primary growth engine.
Since 2023
Copilot
Generative-AI assistant embedded across Windows, 365, GitHub and Azure.
Since 2001
Xbox & Game Pass
Consoles, cloud gaming and a subscription library expanded by Activision Blizzard.
Acquired 2018
GitHub
The largest platform for hosting and collaborating on source code.
Acquired 2016
LinkedIn
The largest professional network, bought for $26.2 billion.
Since 2012
Surface
First-party PCs, tablets and accessories showcasing Windows hardware.
Since 2016
Dynamics & Power Platform
Business apps for ERP, CRM and low-code development.
Standing In The Market
Expertise & Where It Fits
Microsoft's core expertise is platform engineering at planetary scale - operating systems, developer tools, cloud data centers and, increasingly, the compute infrastructure that trains and serves AI models. Its 2026 plan to spend as much as $190 billion in capital, much of it on data centers and memory, is a direct expression of that expertise: owning the physical layer of the AI economy.
In the market it sits as one of a small handful of hyperscalers and one of the most valuable public companies in the world, trading on NASDAQ as MSFT. It competes with AWS and Google Cloud in the cloud, Google and Apple in consumer software and AI, Sony and Nintendo in gaming, and Salesforce, Oracle and SAP in enterprise applications - often against a different set of rivals in each arena.
Milestones
51 Years, Briefly
1975
Microsoft founded
Bill Gates and Paul Allen start "Micro-Soft" in Albuquerque with a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.
1980
The IBM deal
Microsoft licenses MS-DOS to IBM's PC, setting up its dominance in operating systems.
1985
Windows 1.0
The first version of Windows ships - a graphical shell that becomes the world's leading OS.
1986
IPO & Redmond HQ
Microsoft goes public at $21 a share and settles into Redmond, Washington.
2014
Nadella era begins
Satya Nadella becomes CEO and launches a cloud-first, mobile-first reinvention.
2016 · 2018
LinkedIn, then GitHub
Two landmark acquisitions bring the largest professional network and the world's code host in-house.
2023
Copilot & Activision
AI Copilot launches across products; the $68.7B Activision Blizzard deal closes.
2026
AI at scale
AI reaches a ~$37B run rate, Copilot passes 20M paid seats, and Microsoft plans up to $190B in capital spending.
Selected achievements
Reinvented itself as a cloud-first, AI-first company with Azure growing ~40% year over year.
Surpassed 20 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats.
Completed the $68.7B Activision Blizzard acquisition, among the largest tech deals ever.
AI revenue reached a ~$37B annualized run rate, up 123% year over year.
Things that amuse
The name "Micro-Soft" once carried a hyphen, joining "microcomputer" and "software."
It was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico - not Seattle - and moved to Washington in 1979.
Its very first product was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.
Microsoft owns GitHub, which hosts open-source projects that compete with Microsoft itself.
Watch
Interviews & Demos
A starting point for keynotes, product demos and leadership interviews on the official channel.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975, originally in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Where is Microsoft headquartered?
In Redmond, Washington, where the company moved in 1986.
What does Microsoft do?
It builds software, cloud services, AI tools, devices and gaming platforms - Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, Copilot, Xbox, GitHub and LinkedIn - for consumers, businesses and developers.
Who is the CEO of Microsoft?
Satya Nadella has been CEO since 2014 and also chairs the board; he led the shift to cloud and AI.
How does Microsoft make money?
Through three segments - Productivity & Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing - increasingly weighted toward recurring cloud and subscription revenue.
