Microsoft

66 major milestones

American multinational technology company building software, cloud services, devices and AI-powered products (Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, GitHub, Copilot, Xbox).

Latest Valuation

$3,880,000,000,000

3 Funding Rounds

Company Timeline

Years 0-4

First product: Altair BASIC

Microsoft shipped Altair BASIC, the company's first product.

Year 0 • 1975

Microsoft founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen

Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft (originally 'Micro-Soft') in Albuquerque, New Mexico to develop BASIC for the Altair 8800.

Year 0 • 1975

Years 5-9

IBM PC OS contract (led to MS-DOS)

Microsoft licensed or obtained an OS that became MS-DOS for IBM's forthcoming personal computer, setting stage for dominance in PC OS.

Year 5 • 1980

MS-DOS ships with IBM PC

IBM released its Personal Computer with Microsoft's MS-DOS (branded IBM PC DOS), establishing MS-DOS as the dominant PC OS.

Year 6 • 1981

Paul Allen resigns

Co-founder Paul Allen left Microsoft after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma (later became investor/owner in other ventures).

Year 8 • 1983

Years 10-14

Windows 1.0 launched

Microsoft launched the first Windows graphical shell (Windows 1.0) running on top of MS-DOS.

Year 10 • 1985

Microsoft IPO

Microsoft went public; the IPO raised about $61 million (share price $21) and created significant employee wealth.

Year 11 • 1986Valuation: $800,000,000

Years 15-19

Microsoft Office introduced

Microsoft introduced the Office suite bundling Word, Excel and PowerPoint into a single product offering.

Year 15 • 1990

Windows 3.0 launches

Windows 3.0 released with improved graphics and multitasking; it accelerated Windows adoption.

Year 15 • 1990

Windows 3.x mass adoption (1M copies/month milestone)

By the early 1990s Windows versions were selling at roughly one million copies per month, cementing market dominance.

Year 18 • 1993

Years 20-24

Windows 95 launched

Windows 95 launched with a new UI (Start button) and broad marketing push — a major consumer milestone.

Year 20 • 1995

Antitrust litigation begins / major regulatory events

US and later EU antitrust actions in the late 1990s and 2000s (including United States v. Microsoft and EU fines) shaped Microsoft product and bundling practices.

Year 23 • 1998

Microsoft enters Internet era and antitrust scrutiny escalates

Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer into Windows; this strategy led to renewed antitrust scrutiny culminating in later cases.

Year 23 • 1998

Years 25-29

Windows XP released

Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying consumer and professional codebases and becoming widely adopted.

Year 26 • 2001

Xbox launched

Microsoft entered the console gaming market with the original Xbox, later creating the Xbox ecosystem.

Year 26 • 2001

Years 30-34

Azure genesis and cloud investments begin

Microsoft began key cloud initiatives (Project Oxford later, Azure services evolved) and invested in cloud infrastructure.

Year 33 • 2008

Bing introduces ML-driven features

Bing's 2009 launch included machine learning-based features such as query suggestions and related searches leveraging Powerset technology.

Year 34 • 2009

Bing launched with ML / natural language features

Bing search launched (2009) with natural language features and semantic tech (incorporating Powerset tech acquired in 2008).

Year 34 • 2009

Years 35-39

Azure general availability / cloud growth

Microsoft launched Azure as a general cloud platform — a transformative platform for later AI scale.

Year 35 • 2010

Microsoft acquires Skype

Microsoft completed acquisition of Skype in 2011 (acquisition built communications portfolio).

Year 36 • 2011

Satya Nadella named CEO

Satya Nadella succeeded Steve Ballmer as CEO and refocused Microsoft on cloud-first and AI strategies.

Year 39 • 2014

Years 40-44

Project Oxford / Azure AI Foundry announced

Microsoft launched Project Oxford (later Azure AI Foundry) delivering face, voice and language services to developers via Azure.

Year 40 • 2015

ResNet and deep learning breakthroughs (Microsoft Research)

Microsoft Research introduced ResNet (2015), a breakthrough for deep neural networks that improved vision model performance.

Year 40 • 2015

Windows 10 free-upgrade and universal app strategy

Microsoft positioned Windows 10 as a 'universal' platform and offered free upgrades to accelerate adoption across devices.

Year 40 • 2015

Seeing AI launched (accessibility)

Microsoft released Seeing AI, an application that uses computer vision and NLP to describe scenes for visually impaired users.

Year 41 • 2016

Microsoft acquires LinkedIn (announced/closed 2016)

Microsoft announced purchase of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, a major enterprise platform acquisition (deal closed 2016).

Year 41 • 2016

Microsoft acquires Xamarin and SwiftKey (developer/mobile tool investments)

Microsoft acquired Xamarin (Feb 2016) and SwiftKey (Feb 2016) to bolster cross-platform developer tools and AI-powered keyboard technologies.

Year 41 • 2016

Project Brainwave / AI acceleration platform

Microsoft announced Project Brainwave, an FPGA-based system to accelerate real-time AI workloads in Azure.

Year 42 • 2017

Microsoft acquires GitHub

Microsoft announced and completed acquisition of GitHub (deal announced June 2018; ~ $7.5B), bringing developer platform into Microsoft.

Year 43 • 2018

Microsoft reaches $1 trillion market cap

Microsoft surpassed a $1 trillion market capitalization — a major valuation milestone.

Year 44 • 2019Valuation: $1,000,000,000,000

Initial strategic investment in OpenAI (~$1B)

Microsoft announced a multiyear, $1 billion+ partnership/investment in OpenAI to build a supercomputing platform in Azure for large models.

Year 44 • 2019

Years 45-49

Microsoft announces DAX (Dragon Ambient eXperience)

Following acquisition of Nuance, Microsoft integrated ambient clinical intelligence (DAX) to help physicians with documentation (DAX GA 2020).

Year 45 • 2020

Turing-NLG and Azure supercomputer for OpenAI

Microsoft released Turing-NLG (17B parameters) and hosted a top-5 ranked Azure supercomputer to accelerate OpenAI model training/inference.

Year 45 • 2020

GitHub Copilot released (AI coding assistant)

GitHub (now part of Microsoft) released GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer based on large language models. It later became widely adopted.

Year 46 • 2021

Microsoft acquires ZeniMax/formation of Microsoft Gaming division later (2021/2022)

Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media (publisher of Bethesda) in 2020/2021 timeframe and later organized an expanded Microsoft Gaming division (ongoing integrations).

Year 46 • 2021

Microsoft completes acquisition of Nuance

Microsoft closed the acquisition of Nuance Communications (AI and speech tech), strengthening healthcare AI capabilities (transaction ~$19.7B announced 2021).

Year 47 • 2022

Rapid Copilot product rollouts across Microsoft portfolio

In 2023 Microsoft rapidly rolled out Copilot variants (Bing, Microsoft 365, Dynamics, Power Platform, GitHub X, Security Copilot, Viva) — signalling company-wide AI integration.

Year 48 • 2023

AutoGen framework launched

Microsoft released AutoGen (open-source framework) to enable multi-agent AI systems and coordination among agents.

Year 48 • 2023

Microsoft increases total OpenAI investment (> $10B by 2023)

Microsoft expanded its investment/commitment to OpenAI — rising from the initial $1B toward more than $10B cumulative support and infrastructure commitments by 2023.

Year 48 • 2023

DAX Express combines conversational/ambient AI with GPT-4 (healthcare)

Nuance's DAX Express (2023) became the first solution combining ambient and conversational AI with GPT-4; trusted by hundreds of health systems.

Year 48 • 2023

Bing Chat / Copilot in Bing launched

Microsoft launched an AI-powered conversational search experience as 'Bing Chat' — the initial consumer Copilot experience built on Prometheus/GPT-4 tech.

Year 48 • 2023

Dynamics 365 Copilot announced

Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Copilot (AI assistant to help business users with sales, service and operations).

Year 48 • 2023

Microsoft 365 Copilot launched

Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot (AI assistant integrated across Office apps) to help with writing, summarization and analysis.

Year 48 • 2023

GitHub Copilot X announced

GitHub announced Copilot X — an evolution of GitHub Copilot with chat, voice and additional AI capabilities for developers.

Year 48 • 2023

Microsoft Security Copilot released

Microsoft released Security Copilot — an AI security assistant combining Microsoft threat telemetry with advanced models.

Year 48 • 2023

Build 2023: Copilot on Windows announced

At Build 2023 Microsoft announced plans to integrate Copilot into Windows 11 (taskbar access) and across the Microsoft product family.

Year 48 • 2023

Windows Copilot & Copilot on Windows

Microsoft introduced Windows Copilot (in-Windows assistant) as part of a broader Copilot rollout across products.

Year 48 • 2023

Microsoft unifies branding as 'Microsoft Copilot'

Microsoft moved to unify its AI assistants under the 'Copilot' brand for consumer and enterprise offerings.

Year 48 • 2023

Microsoft completes acquisition of Activision Blizzard

Microsoft closed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard (video game publisher) in a $68.7 billion deal, expanding gaming footprint.

Year 48 • 2023

Copilot freemium model established

Microsoft positioned Copilot services on a freemium model: core features available free, newer/custom features behind paid Copilot Pro/subscriptions.

Year 49 • 2024

Copilot Studio and Agent-building tools expand developer ecosystem

With Copilot Studio (May 2024) Microsoft provided tooling for customers and partners to build custom autonomous agents and chatbots.

Year 49 • 2024

Copilot key included on Windows 11 devices announced

Microsoft announced a hardware 'Copilot' key on Windows 11 keyboards to provide single-key access to Copilot features.

Year 49 • 2024

Microsoft Copilot Pro introduced

Microsoft introduced Copilot Pro — a paid tier offering priority access to advanced Copilot features and custom chatbots.

Year 49 • 2024

Copilot for Finance announced

Microsoft launched Copilot for Finance — a tailored Copilot experience aimed at finance teams and workflows.

Year 49 • 2024

Copilot+ PCs introduced

Microsoft introduced 'Copilot+ PCs' — a new PC category combining CPU, GPU and high-performance NPU to run AI workloads locally (announced May 20, 2024).

Year 49 • 2024

Copilot Studio (tools for autonomous agents) announced

Microsoft unveiled Copilot Studio to enable building of autonomous agents and advanced Copilot customizations for businesses.

Year 49 • 2024

Record capital expenditure to support AI: $19B quarter

Microsoft reported record capital spending of approximately $19 billion in the June 2024 quarter to expand data centers and AI infrastructure.

Year 49 • 2024

Copilot Labs and Copilot Vision launched; updated consumer experience

Microsoft introduced Copilot Vision and Copilot Labs for consumer AI experiences (vision + multimodal capabilities) and updated Copilot app.

Year 49 • 2024

Years 50-54

Muse generative model for gaming announced

Microsoft announced Muse (2025), a generative AI model tailored for game design and environment understanding, marking a gaming AI milestone.

Year 50 • 2025

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat + Agents announced

Microsoft expanded Microsoft 365 Copilot with Chat + Agents, adding agentic workflows directly inside Microsoft 365.

Year 50 • 2025

Copilot available in Microsoft 365 personal & family subscriptions

Microsoft announced Copilot integration for Microsoft 365 personal and family tiers to broaden consumer access.

Year 50 • 2025

Deep reasoning announced for Microsoft 365

Microsoft announced enhancements for deep reasoning capabilities in Microsoft 365, aiming to improve complex problem solving in apps.

Year 50 • 2025

Phi small language model category introduced (research-to-product)

Microsoft introduced Phi (2024/2025 research-to-product work) pioneering small language models optimized for edge and mobile scenarios.

Year 50 • 2025

Microsoft 50th anniversary

Microsoft celebrated 50 years since founding (April 4, 1975).

Year 50 • 2025

Azure AI Foundry adoption metrics reported

Microsoft reported more than ~60,000 organizations using Azure AI Foundry and 65% of Fortune 500 adopting Azure OpenAI Service (company-reported metrics).

Year 50 • 2025

Microsoft market cap (reported)

Media/financial sources reported Microsoft market capitalization around $3.88 trillion (mid-August 2025 snapshot).

Year 50 • 2025Valuation: $3,880,000,000,000