In September 2024, BlackRock and Microsoft announced a $30 billion fund, the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, to invest in AI infrastructure such as data centers and energy projects. In June 2024, Microsoft announced that it was building a “hyperscale data centre” in South East Leeds. Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro. In March 2024, Inflection AI’s cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan announced their departure from the company in order to start Microsoft AI, with Microsoft acqui-hiring nearly the entirety of its 70-person workforce. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI’s employees and investors on its board.
During the first six months of 2013, Microsoft received requests that affected between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts. Following media reports about PRISM, NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. The layoffs primarily affected Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected. As a result, the company will record an impairment and restructuring charge of approximately $950 million, of which approximately $200 million will relate to severance payments.

Global

In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company’s mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems and the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, which most notably include the spinnaus sign up Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet editor, and the PowerPoint presentation program. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and other fields.

Visualize my data

• On June 4, 2018, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of GitHub for $7.5 billion, a deal that closed on October 26, 2018.
• In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for police surveillance in New York City.
• The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers.
• Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows.
• In 2015, the construction of a data center in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, led to the destruction of a historic African American cemetery despite archeological recommendations for preservation.
• Microsoft provides information about reported bugs in its software to intelligence agencies of the United States government, prior to the public release of the fix.

Another community site that provides daily videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006. MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software. Understand the market, and the customers, and then go pedal to the metal, with release after release focused on what the customers need, incorporating their feedback. Microsoft noted in a blog post that the attack might have been prevented if the accounts in question had enabled multi-factor authentication, a defensive measure which is widely recommended in the industry, including by Microsoft itself. The DoJ had “changed data request rules on alerting the Internet users about agencies accessing their information.” The statement also marked the beginning of three-part program to enhance Microsoft’s encryption and transparency efforts.
On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and General Electric’s NBC unit created a new 24/7 cable news channel, MSNBC. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what The New York Times called “the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry’s history,” Windows 95 quickly became a success. 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. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows.

Social Media

The company was the official jersey sponsor of Finland’s national basketball team at EuroBasket 2015, a major sponsor of the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT (2017–2020) and a sponsor of the Renault F1 Team (2016–2020). 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’s retail locations are part of a greater strategy to help build a connection with its consumers. As per company executives, Microsoft had been on the lookout for a flagship location since 2009. On October 26, 2015, the company opened its retail location on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for police surveillance in New York City. The Surface was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company’s history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers, in Taipei in June 2011. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. It launched an alliance with Nokia in 2011 and Microsoft worked closely with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained partners with long-time Windows Mobile OEM HTC.

Access AI-powered apps

Azure Services Platform, the company’s entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the video game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.citation needed Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market since the 1990s. The company’s 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies,a and one of the most valuable brands globally.
On March 13, 2020, Gates announced that he is leaving the board of directors of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus more on his philanthropic efforts. 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. On July 2, 2025, Microsoft announced it would cut nearly 4% of its workforce, around 9,000 jobs, to control costs amid heavy AI infrastructure spending, while also restructuring management and streamlining operations.

Built-in security

In 2015, the construction of a data center in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, led to the destruction of a historic African American cemetery despite archeological recommendations for preservation. On July 29, 2015, Windows 10 was released, with its server sibling, Windows Server 2016, released in September 2016. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of its first interactive whiteboard, named Surface Hub. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Mojang, best known for Minecraft, for $2.5 billion.

• The “Connector” does not compete with the public bus system and works with it to provide a cohesive transportation network not just for its employees but also for the public.
• On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems.
• The organization requested that European data protection authorities investigate whether this data processing complies with EU law.
• In April 2019, Microsoft became the third public U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion.
• 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).

In March the company also established guidelines that censor users of Office 365 from using profanity in private documents. In March 2018, Microsoft recalled Windows 10 S to change it to a mode for the Windows operating system rather than a separate and unique operating system. In January 2018, Microsoft patched Windows 10 to account for CPU problems related to Intel’s Meltdown security breach. It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices.