The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. Microsoft is ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models. At Microsoft Build 2026 in June 2026, Microsoft announced the preview availability of Azure Cobalt 200 virtual machines, its second-generation Arm-based custom CPU, offering up to 135% better performance for cloud database workloads and 50% overall CPU performance improvement over the previous generation Cobalt 100.
Microsoft also named Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company’s portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the Very Well market of providing online education to large numbers of people. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested what they termed war profiteering by the company from its $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army.
In December 2013, the company made a statement to further emphasize that it takes its customers’ privacy and data protection very seriously, saying that “government snooping potentially now constitutes an ‘advanced persistent threat,’ alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks”. A Microsoft spokesperson stated that the corporation runs several programs that facilitate the sharing of such information with the U.S. government. The cuts affected multiple divisions, including Xbox, with 830 positions eliminated at its Redmond, Washington headquarters. In July 2025, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs, cutting approximately 9,000 employees in its largest workforce reduction in over two years. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and chief design officer Allen Adham also resigned.
1994: Windows and Office
To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of “holiday stores” across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of “bricks-and-mortar” Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012. The Surface was unveiled in June 2012, becoming the first computer in the company’s history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance. With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start.
1994: Windows and Office
On 9 March 2026, Microsoft unveiled the Copilot Cowork tool, which is based on Claude Cowork, tapping into the growing demand for autonomous agents. In March 2026, Microsoft-controlled discussion forums banned the nickname Microslop, used to express pushback against Microsoft’s Copilot-based and GenAI efforts. In June 2025, a United Nations report on corporations complicit in the Gaza genocide showed that Microsoft was one of several companies “central to Israel’s surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.” In mid-2025, Microsoft’s Russian division, Microsoft Rus LLC, filed for bankruptcy after President Vladimir Putin stated that foreign services providers should be throttled in Russia to make way for domestic software. The outage was traced back to a flawed update of CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software, which resulted in Microsoft systems crashing and causing disruptions across various sectors. On July 19, a global IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting businesses, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide.
1994: Windows and Office
In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft. Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming.
- Microsoft is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H-1B visas, which allows companies in the U.S. to employ certain foreign workers.
- On August 23, 2012, Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo at the opening of its 23rd Microsoft store in Boston, indicating the company’s shift of focus from the classic style to the tile-centric modern interface, which it uses/will use on the Windows Phone platform, Xbox 360, Windows 8 and the upcoming Office Suites.
- The company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows and has since expanded into areas such as Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and more.
- The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a report of how progressive the organization deems company policies towards LGBT employees, rated Microsoft as 87% from 2002 to 2004 and as 100% from 2005 to 2010 after it allowed gender expression.
- The company is often referred to as a “Velvet Sweatshop”, a term which originated in a 1989 Seattle Times article, and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft’s own employees.
- Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector.
- Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak.
- The company’s retail locations are part of a greater strategy to help build a connection with its consumers.
- The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company’s gaming sales.
- The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI.
- To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of “holiday stores” across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of “bricks-and-mortar” Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012.
- Following media reports about PRISM, NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft.
- Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in data centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models.
- The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems.
This inquiry was part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to enforce guidelines on the power of major tech companies. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant. In June 2022, Microsoft published the report on Russian cyber attacks and concluded that state-backed Russian hackers “have engaged in “strategic espionage” against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups” in 42 countries supporting Kyiv. On August 23, 2012, Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo at the opening of its 23rd Microsoft store in Boston, indicating the company’s shift of focus from the classic style to the tile-centric modern interface, which it uses/will use on the Windows Phone platform, Xbox 360, Windows 8 and the upcoming Office Suites. Microsoft’s logo with the tagline “Your potential. Our passion.”—below the main corporate name—is based on a slogan Microsoft used in 2008.
