Microsoft, regularly among the world’s largest companies by market capitalization, was founded in 1975.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen established the company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after developing a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800 microcomputer. The company’s original name was Microsoft, formed from “microcomputer” and “software.”
Microsoft’s early success came from licensing software rather than manufacturing computers. Its agreement to provide an operating system for IBM-compatible personal computers helped make MS-DOS a standard in the 1980s. Windows later became the company’s best-known consumer platform.
The founding year is sometimes confused with 1981, when Microsoft was incorporated as a privately held company, or 1986, when it went public. Those are important milestones, but the company itself began in 1975.