Microsoft, founded in 1975, is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and became a major market-cap leader.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975. The company later moved its headquarters to the Seattle-area city of Redmond, Washington. Microsoft first became famous for software such as MS-DOS and Windows, then expanded into productivity software, gaming, enterprise services, and cloud computing.
Its Azure platform became a major cloud business, while Microsoft 365, LinkedIn, GitHub, Xbox, and the Windows ecosystem broadened the company’s revenue sources. These businesses helped Microsoft regain a leading position among the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies.
Microsoft is sometimes confused with IBM because both have long histories in business computing. Microsoft’s landmark relationship with IBM involved licensing an operating system for the IBM PC, but Microsoft remained a separate company and retained rights that supported its later growth.