Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft has become one of the most valuable companies in the world and a dominant force in enterprise AI.
Microsoft's AI strategy spans cloud infrastructure, developer tools, productivity software, and frontier model development. The company's $13+ billion investment in OpenAI gives it exclusive access to GPT models, while its own Microsoft AI division (MAI) builds consumer and enterprise AI products.
Key AI products and platforms include:
- **Azure AI** — Enterprise cloud AI platform offering Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Services, and AI infrastructure with 400+ data centers in 70+ regions
- **Microsoft Copilot** — AI assistant powered by GPT-4/GPT-5, integrated across Windows, Microsoft 365, Edge, and Bing, with 100M+ monthly active users
- **GitHub Copilot** — AI pair programmer with 20M+ users, capable of code generation, review, and asynchronous task execution
- **Copilot Studio** — No-code/low-code platform used by 230,000+ organizations to build custom AI agents
- **Phi models** — Microsoft's family of efficient small language models designed for on-device and edge AI scenarios
- **Microsoft AI division (MAI)** — Led by Mustafa Suleyman (DeepMind co-founder), overseeing Copilot, Bing AI, and consumer AI products
- **Azure OpenAI Service** — Enterprise-grade access to OpenAI models with Azure security, compliance, and regional availability
As a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: MSFT), Microsoft has a market capitalization of approximately $3 trillion, generated $282 billion in FY2025 revenue, and employs approximately 228,000 people. Microsoft Cloud revenue alone was $169 billion in FY2025, with Azure AI services contributing 22 percentage points to Azure's 40% growth rate.