Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and later became a market-capitalization giant through Windows and Azure.
The company began after Gates and Allen developed a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800, an early personal computer. Microsoft initially supplied software rather than manufacturing the computer hardware itself.
Its major breakthrough came through MS-DOS and Windows. Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to IBM for the original IBM PC, while Windows later became the dominant desktop operating system worldwide. The company expanded into productivity software, gaming, enterprise tools, and cloud computing.
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform and became a central growth engine alongside Microsoft 365 and its business software. Microsoft is often confused with MicroStrategy or other similarly named software firms, but Microsoft’s name originally referred to “microcomputer software.”