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Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in a garage in 1975 to put a computer on every desk. Fifty years on, the company they built is worth nearly three trillion dollars and is now racing to put artificial intelligence into every office on the planet.
| Full name | Microsoft Corporation |
| Ticker / exchange | MSFT — Nasdaq |
| Headquarters | Redmond, Washington, United States |
| Sector | Technology — Software & Infrastructure |
| Employees | 228,000 |
| Market value (market cap) | $2.84 trillion |
| Yearly sales (revenue, FY2025) | $281.7 billion |
| Net profit (FY2025) | $101.8 billion |
| Net margin (FY2025) | 36.1% (our calculation); 39.3% on trailing twelve months (EODHD) |
| Return on equity | 34.0% (EODHD) |
| Price-to-earnings ratio | 22.7× |
| Dividend yield | 0.93% |
| Net cash (FY2025) | At least $30.2 billion on hand; long-term debt not separately disclosed in available data |
| Website | microsoft.com |
What it is
Microsoft sells the software and cloud services that run much of the world’s working life — Windows, Office (now Microsoft 365), the Azure cloud platform, LinkedIn, and the Xbox gaming network, among others.
Its three reporting segments are Productivity and Business Processes (Office, LinkedIn, Dynamics), Intelligent Cloud (Azure), and More Personal Computing (Windows, Xbox, Surface devices); cloud is now the engine of growth.
Who owns it
Microsoft has no single majority shareholder; control is genuinely dispersed. Vanguard and BlackRock are the largest institutional shareholders, collectively controlling nearly 18% of outstanding shares.
Steve Ballmer — Microsoft’s former CEO — and Bill Gates remain the largest individual shareholders, owning approximately 4.4% and just under 1% respectively. Microsoft has only one class of shares, one vote per share, so voting power equals ownership percentage exactly — no founder super-voting rights of the kind seen elsewhere in tech.
The EODHD data shows insiders at 0.08% and institutions at roughly 75.8% of the float.
Who runs it
Satya Nadella has served as CEO since 2014 and as Chairman since 2021, making him the most powerful individual in the room. Amy Hood has been CFO since 2013 and is credited with strengthening Microsoft’s financial performance through strategic investment and operational discipline.
Sandra E. Peterson serves as Lead Independent Director of Microsoft’s board.
Brad Smith serves as Vice Chair and President, managing government relations, cybersecurity policy, and representing Microsoft in high-level global negotiations on antitrust, privacy, and AI regulation.
The money, in plain words
Microsoft keeps about 36 cents of profit from every dollar of sales — a net profit margin of 36.1% (our calculation, FY2025) that is extraordinary for a company of this scale; most large industrial businesses consider 10% a success. Revenue has grown from $211.9 billion in FY2023 to $281.7 billion in FY2025, a rise of roughly 33% in two years (our calculation).
For every dollar shareholders have put in, the company earns back about 34 cents a year — a return on equity of 34.0%, well above the technology-sector average. The balance sheet holds at least $30.2 billion in cash, and the price-to-earnings ratio of 22.7× — what investors pay per dollar of annual earnings — reflects confidence in future growth without the extreme premiums seen at earlier points in the AI hype cycle.
What it is doing now
At its Build 2026 conference in early June, Microsoft unveiled “Autopilots” — a new category of always-on AI agents that work autonomously, with their own identity, and act on behalf of users. OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 also became generally available inside Microsoft’s developer platform on 3 June 2026.
Nadella has made Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and the integration of AI across its entire ecosystem a defining strategic move. The commercial bet is straightforward: attach an AI “Copilot” subscription to every Microsoft 365 seat already sold to hundreds of millions of business users, turning a software franchise into a recurring AI-services business.
What to watch
- AI revenue conversion: Azure and Copilot are growing fast, but the market is watching to see whether AI add-on fees translate into durable margin expansion or just higher costs.
- Capital spending: Microsoft has committed tens of billions to AI data-centre infrastructure; whether returns justify that outlay will define the next two or three years of earnings.
- Regulatory pressure: Antitrust scrutiny of the OpenAI relationship and Microsoft’s AI market position is active in the US and Europe.
- Valuation discipline: At 22.7× earnings the stock is not cheap; any slowdown in cloud or AI growth would reset that multiple quickly.
Sources
This is news, not investment advice.
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