Microsoft began trading publicly on March 13, 1986, making Bill Gates a major shareholder in a listed company.
The initial public offering took place on the Nasdaq stock market. Microsoft’s shares were offered at $21 each, and the company’s market value rose substantially during its first day of trading.
The IPO transformed Gates’s personal finances and helped make him one of the world’s wealthiest people. It also gave Microsoft publicly traded shares that could be used to attract employees and support future expansion.
Microsoft had already been operating for more than a decade by then. Its public listing therefore came after the company’s early Altair BASIC, MS-DOS, and software-licensing milestones, not at its founding.