Steven Sinofsky spent 23 years at Microsoft building some of the most-used software in history - Office, Windows 7, Windows 8, and secretly, the Surface tablet. A meticulous operator who refused to promise features until they were ready, he rose to become President of the Windows Division and Microsoft's most likely successor to Steve Ballmer before his abrupt departure in 2012. Today he's a Board Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and writes Hardcore Software, a serialized Substack memoir chronicling the rise and fall of the PC revolution from the inside.
Dave Rupert is a senior UX engineer at Microsoft, co-founder of the Austin-based web agency Paravel, and co-host of the long-running ShopTalk Show podcast. With over two decades in web development, he is widely recognized for his accessibility advocacy - notably founding The A11Y Project in 2014 - and for open-source tools like FitVids.js and FitText.js. He brings a maker's instinct, a teacher's heart, and a quietly sharp wit to everything he touches.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is Microsoft's flagship suite of intelligent, cloud-based enterprise business applications combining CRM and ERP capabilities under a single unified platform. Launched in November 2016, it covers sales, customer service, finance, supply chain, HR, commerce, and field service — all deeply integrated with Microsoft 365, Azure, LinkedIn, and Power Platform. With embedded Copilot AI and autonomous AI agents, Dynamics 365 serves nearly 100,000 organizations worldwide and is a consistent Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader across CRM, ERP, and Sales Force Automation categories.
On March 31, 2026, OpenAI closed the largest private funding round in history — $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. Anchored by Amazon ($50B), Nvidia ($30B), and SoftBank ($30B), with continued participation from Microsoft and a sweeping syndicate of global institutions, the round dwarfs every prior private tech raise and cements OpenAI as the world's most valuable startup by a wide margin. The company is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue, counting 900 million weekly ChatGPT users, and is widely expected to pursue an IPO.