Microsoft owns Azure, the cloud-computing platform that helped make it one of the world’s highest-market-cap companies.
Azure provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, artificial-intelligence services, and developer tools through Microsoft’s global data-center infrastructure. It is a major part of Microsoft’s cloud business and is frequently compared with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Its early success came from software for personal computers, especially the MS-DOS operating system and Windows. The company later expanded into enterprise software, gaming through Xbox, professional networking through LinkedIn, and productivity subscriptions through Microsoft 365.
Market capitalization reflects investor expectations about future profits rather than simply the size of a company’s workforce or sales. Microsoft’s recurring software subscriptions and cloud services have been important reasons investors have valued it so highly. Azure is not a separate publicly traded company; it is a business segment within Microsoft Corporation.