Microsoft Corporation

American technology company founded in 1975, whose 2019–2025 investment and cloud partnership with OpenAI made it a central actor in that company's 2023 board crisis and 2024–2026 Musk litigation.

Researched by Muhammad Abdullah Al Yasin · 13 September 2026

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Established: 1975
Location: Redmond, Washington, United States
Country: United States
Founded: 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Headquarters: Redmond, Washington
Chief executive: Satya Nadella, since February 4, 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer
Core business (per Britannica): Productivity and business processes (Microsoft 365, LinkedIn), intelligent cloud (Azure), and personal computing (Windows, Xbox, Surface)
FY2026 revenue: $331.8 billion, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026
Market capitalization: Approximately $3.7 trillion, as of September 12, 2026
Cumulative OpenAI investment (as of October 2025): $13.8 billion, since 2019
Stake in OpenAI Group (as of October 2025): 27%, reported at approximately $135 billion

Overview

Microsoft Corporation is an American technology company founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and led since February 4, 2014 by chief executive Satya Nadella, who succeeded Steve Ballmer (Britannica; TechCrunch). Britannica describes its business as organized around three segments: productivity and business processes (including Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn), intelligent cloud services (led by Azure), and personal computing (Windows, Xbox and Surface); for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, the company reported $331.8 billion in revenue and, as of September 12, 2026, a market capitalization of roughly $3.7 trillion (Britannica). This profile does not attempt a full corporate history; it instead focuses, after brief baseline facts, on Microsoft’s extensively documented investment and partnership relationship with OpenAI and its resulting role in that company’s November 2023 board crisis and the 2024–2026 Musk v. OpenAI litigation.

Founding and core business

Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and grew, according to Britannica, into “one of the most powerful brand names and profitable companies in American history” by the mid-1990s on the strength of its dominance of personal-computer operating systems, before diversifying into cloud computing and artificial intelligence under Nadella (Britannica). Nadella took over as Microsoft’s third CEO in company history after 22 years at Microsoft, most recently as Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise; Gates, the founding CEO, took on a new “Founder and Technology Advisor” role at the time of the transition (TechCrunch).

The OpenAI partnership

Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI began with a $1 billion investment announced July 22, 2019, under which Microsoft became OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, committed to build new Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure, and received rights to commercialize some of OpenAI’s “pre-AGI technologies”; the companies described the deal as resting on “shared principles on ethics and trust” (CNBC). Microsoft extended the partnership with a further, undisclosed-amount round in 2021, and then a much larger commitment confirmed January 23, 2023 and reported at $10 billion (Bloomberg).

By October 2025, OpenAI restructured into a for-profit public benefit corporation, OpenAI Group, controlled by the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation. In that restructuring, completed October 28, 2025, Microsoft received a 27% stake in OpenAI Group, reported at approximately $135 billion, on a cumulative $13.8 billion it had invested since 2019 — a return Al Jazeera’s reporting characterized as nearly tenfold — and committed to a reported $250 billion Azure cloud-services agreement running at least through 2032. As part of the deal, Microsoft gave up its earlier right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider and relinquished any claim to hardware developed through OpenAI’s acquisition of Jony Ive’s design firm, while retaining certain rights to OpenAI’s models and products through at least 2032; Microsoft’s own shares rose 2.5% on the news, pushing its market value back above $4 trillion at the time (Al Jazeera).

Microsoft’s role in the November 2023 board crisis

When OpenAI’s board removed Sam Altman as chief executive in November 2023, Microsoft moved quickly to secure OpenAI’s displaced leadership. On November 20, 2023, after three days of intense discussions, Nadella announced that Altman and Greg Brockman would join Microsoft to lead a new, internal “advanced AI research team,” with other former OpenAI staff — named in reporting as Szymon Sidor, Jakub Pachocki and Aleksander Madry — expected to join them, and with Microsoft reportedly extending job offers to OpenAI’s wider staff. Nadella framed the move as consistent with the existing partnership, saying Microsoft had “learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft,” while adding that Microsoft “remain[ed] committed to our partnership with OpenAI.” At the time, Microsoft had invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI and held close to a 49% economic interest in the company (TechCrunch). Altman was reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO the following day and did not take up the Microsoft role; the fuller sequence of the board’s decision, the employee revolt, and Altman’s reinstatement is covered in this site’s OpenAI profile.

The Musk v. OpenAI litigation

Microsoft became a defendant in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman only after Musk’s attorneys filed an amended complaint on November 14, 2024, adding Microsoft as a co-defendant along with new federal antitrust allegations. The amended complaint alleged that xAI, Musk’s competing AI company, “has been harmed by … an inability to obtain compute from Microsoft on terms anywhere near as favorable as OpenAI receives,” that Microsoft and OpenAI shared “competitively sensitive information,” and that their relationship amounted to a “de facto merger” given Microsoft’s roughly 49% economic interest and its extensive cloud infrastructure supporting OpenAI. The complaint separately argued that a Microsoft vice president’s position as a board observer at OpenAI facilitated improper coordination between the two companies (TechCrunch). A related report additionally describes the complaint alleging that Microsoft and OpenAI conditioned investment on agreements not to work with rival AI developers and that their exclusive licensing arrangement functioned as an “unapproved merger” aimed at monopolizing the generative AI market (Nasdaq/Dow Jones).

Microsoft and OpenAI jointly moved to dismiss the amended complaint. In their February 2025 filing, Microsoft’s lawyers called Musk’s suit a “scattershot” effort designed to “slow Microsoft and OpenAI down” without succeeding on any individual claim, argued the complaint was “devoid of factual specificity and substantiation, repeatedly relying on unsupported ‘information and belief,’” and separately contended that Microsoft should not be a defendant at all, since the underlying dispute centered on OpenAI’s 2015 founding — a matter that predated Microsoft’s involvement with the company entirely (The Register).

On May 18, 2026, a federal jury in the Northern District of California unanimously dismissed all of Musk’s claims, including the antitrust claim against Microsoft over its “$13 billion” in OpenAI investments made between 2019 and 2023; NPR reports that this dismissal, like the others, turned on the jury’s finding that Musk had waited too long to sue rather than on a ruling on the merits of the underlying allegations (NPR). The fuller account of the trial, the claims against OpenAI and Altman specifically, and the presiding judge’s and Musk’s attorney’s public statements is covered in this site’s OpenAI profile.

What this profile does not claim

This profile is not a complete corporate history of Microsoft: it does not cover the company’s full product history, its prior antitrust history (including the U.S. government’s antitrust case in the 1990s–2000s), its full list of chief executives and their tenures, its major acquisitions, or its activities outside the OpenAI relationship. It does not state a specific dollar figure for Microsoft’s 2021 investment round in OpenAI, since no source read here discloses one. It does not detail the original, pre-Microsoft version of Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman filed in mid-2024, since Microsoft was not yet a party to it at that stage; that earlier history, along with the November 2023 board crisis in fuller detail, is covered in this site’s OpenAI profile. It does not resolve whether the jury that dismissed Musk’s claims in May 2026 separately evaluated the antitrust allegations against Microsoft on their merits, or dismissed them solely on statute-of-limitations grounds without reaching the merits, since the source read for the verdict does not specify this. It does not confirm whether Musk’s attorney’s stated intent to appeal was formally acted on, or that appeal’s status. Finally, all dollar and valuation figures given here — Microsoft’s $13.8 billion cumulative OpenAI investment, its 27% stake reported at about $135 billion, and Microsoft’s own $331.8 billion revenue and roughly $3.7 trillion market capitalization — are dated snapshots tied to the specific reporting cited and are not asserted to be current as of any later date.

Timeline

1975: Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen; the company later becomes headquartered in Redmond, Washington.
2014-02-04: Satya Nadella becomes Microsoft's third chief executive, succeeding Steve Ballmer, after 22 years at the company including as Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise; Bill Gates takes on a new "Founder and Technology Advisor" role.
2019-07-22: Microsoft invests $1 billion in OpenAI, becoming its exclusive cloud provider and committing to build new Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure, in exchange for the right to commercialize some of OpenAI's "pre-AGI technologies."
2023-01-23: Microsoft confirms a further multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, reported at $10 billion, extending the 2019 investment and an additional round in 2021.
2023-11-20: Days after OpenAI's board removes Sam Altman as CEO, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announces that Altman and Greg Brockman will join Microsoft to lead a new internal advanced AI research team, with several other former OpenAI staff also expected to follow; Altman is reinstated as OpenAI's CEO the next day and does not take up the Microsoft role.
2024-11-14: Elon Musk's attorneys file an amended complaint naming Microsoft as a co-defendant in his lawsuit against OpenAI, adding federal antitrust allegations that Microsoft and OpenAI's relationship amounts to a "de facto merger."
2025-02-04: Microsoft and OpenAI jointly urge a federal judge to dismiss Musk's amended complaint, calling it "devoid of factual specificity" and arguing Microsoft should not be a defendant at all since the dispute centers on OpenAI's founding, which predates Microsoft's involvement.
2025-10-28: OpenAI completes its restructuring into a public benefit corporation. Microsoft receives a 27% stake in the new OpenAI Group, reported at about $135 billion on its cumulative $13.8 billion invested since 2019, and commits to a reported $250 billion Azure cloud-services agreement running at least through 2032; Microsoft gives up its prior right of first refusal as OpenAI's compute provider and any claim to hardware from OpenAI's acquisition of Jony Ive's design firm.
2026-05-18: A federal jury in the Northern District of California unanimously dismisses all claims in Musk's lawsuit, including the $13 billion antitrust claim against Microsoft, finding Musk waited too long to sue; the jury's reasoning is reported as resting on the statute of limitations.

What we could not verify

These claims came up in research and could not be confirmed. They are recorded here rather than published as fact or quietly dropped. If you hold a source that settles one, please tell us.

No source read for this profile gives a specific dollar figure for Microsoft's "additional round" of OpenAI investment in 2021; only Bloomberg's 2023 reporting confirms that a 2021 round occurred, without a stated amount. This profile does not estimate that figure.
This profile does not independently detail the original, pre-Microsoft lawsuit Elon Musk filed against OpenAI and Sam Altman in mid-2024, since Microsoft was not yet a party to it; Microsoft's position becomes relevant only from the November 2024 amended complaint onward, which is the focus of the litigation section below. Fuller detail on the earlier stages of the suit is covered in this site's OpenAI and Sam Altman profiles.
NPR's reporting on the May 2026 jury verdict states plainly that the antitrust claim against Microsoft "was also dismissed" alongside all of Musk's other claims, and attributes the overall verdict to the statute-of-limitations finding, but it does not specify whether the jury reached the Microsoft-specific antitrust allegations on their merits or dismissed them on the same limitations grounds without separately evaluating them. This profile does not assert which is the case.
As with this site's OpenAI profile, whether Elon Musk's stated intent to appeal the May 2026 verdict was formally acted on, and its status, was not confirmed in the sources read for this profile.
Dollar and equity figures given here for the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship (the $13.8 billion cumulative investment, the 27% stake reported at about $135 billion, and Microsoft's own $331.8 billion revenue and roughly $3.7 trillion market capitalization) are snapshots tied to the specific reporting dates cited and are not asserted to be current as of any later date.
This profile does not attempt a complete history of Microsoft (products, prior CEOs' full tenures, acquisitions, antitrust history predating OpenAI, or its full corporate structure); see "What this profile does not claim" below.

Sources

10 sources (9 tier 1, 1 tier 2), each opened and read against the claim it supports. Every source is independent of the subject; no first-party material is cited. See the source policy.

Built from encyclopedia, wire/broadcast and specialist-technology reporting (Britannica, Bloomberg, CNBC, GeekWire, TechCrunch, Al Jazeera, NPR, The Register, Nasdaq/Dow Jones), each fetched and read in full for this profile. This is not an attempt at a full corporate history of Microsoft; it gives baseline founding, leadership and scale facts and then focuses in depth on the specific, directly-documented relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI, since that is where this site's existing sourcing and entity graph are concentrated.

Microsoft Corporation — Britannica · Tier 1 Supports: Microsoft's 1975 founding by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, its Redmond, Washington headquarters, Satya Nadella's role as chairman and CEO, its three core business segments, and its reported revenue, market capitalization and share price as of September 2026.
Microsoft Names Satya Nadella Its New CEO — TechCrunch, 2014-02-04 · Tier 1 Supports: The February 4, 2014 date Satya Nadella became Microsoft's chief executive, his succession of Steve Ballmer, his prior role as Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise, and Bill Gates's new "Founder and Technology Advisor" role.
Microsoft invests $1 billion in Elon Musk's OpenAI — CNBC, 2019-07-22 · Tier 1 Supports: The July 22, 2019 announcement of Microsoft's $1 billion investment in OpenAI, the terms making Microsoft OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider, the Azure AI supercomputing commitment, and OpenAI's license of "pre-AGI technologies" to Microsoft for commercialization.
Microsoft to Invest $10 Billion in ChatGPT Maker OpenAI — Bloomberg, 2023-01-23 · Tier 1 Supports: The January 23, 2023 confirmation of a further, reported $10 billion Microsoft investment in OpenAI, and its reference to Microsoft's prior 2019 investment and an additional 2021 round.
OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to join Microsoft — TechCrunch, 2023-11-20 · Tier 1 Supports: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's November 20, 2023 announcement hiring Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to lead a new internal advanced AI research team, the other named former OpenAI staff expected to join, Microsoft's roughly 49% economic stake and over $10 billion invested in OpenAI at that time, and Nadella's quotes on the arrangement.
OpenAI restructures into public-benefit firm, Microsoft takes 27% stake — Al Jazeera, 2025-10-28 · Tier 1 Supports: The October 28, 2025 completion of OpenAI's restructuring, Microsoft's 27% stake reported at about $135 billion on a cumulative $13.8 billion invested (a roughly tenfold return), the reported $250 billion Azure commitment, Microsoft's surrender of its right of first refusal as compute provider and of any claim to hardware from OpenAI's acquisition of Jony Ive's design firm, and the resulting rise in Microsoft's own share price and market capitalization.
Musk's amended lawsuit against OpenAI names Microsoft as defendant — TechCrunch, 2024-11-14 · Tier 1 Supports: The November 14, 2024 filing of Musk's amended complaint naming Microsoft as a co-defendant, and the specific federal antitrust allegations against Microsoft: exclusive dealing that allegedly disadvantaged xAI's access to Microsoft compute, exchange of competitively sensitive information, a "de facto merger" characterization tied to Microsoft's $13 billion investment and roughly 49% economic interest, and claims about a Microsoft board observer's role.
Musk Expands OpenAI Lawsuit, Adding Microsoft and Antitrust Claims — Nasdaq (Dow Jones) · Tier 1 Supports: Corroboration of the antitrust allegations against Microsoft and OpenAI (conditioning investment on non-competition, an "unapproved merger" characterization of the exclusive licensing arrangement, and alleged monopolization of the generative AI market), and OpenAI's description in the complaint as having gone from a "tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit" in eight years.
Jury dismisses all claims in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — NPR, 2026-05-18 · Tier 1 Supports: The May 18, 2026 jury verdict dismissing all of Musk's claims, including confirmation that Musk separately sued Microsoft over "aiding OpenAI through investments totaling $13 billion between 2019 and 2023" and that this claim, too, "was also dismissed," and that the jury's dismissal turned on the statute of limitations rather than a ruling on the merits.
OpenAI, Microsoft urge judge to toss out Musk's 'fact-free' lawsuit — The Register, 2025-02-04 · Tier 2 Supports: Microsoft's specific February 2025 legal arguments for dismissal: that Musk's amended complaint was a "scattershot" filing intended to "slow Microsoft and OpenAI down," that it was "devoid of factual specificity," and that Microsoft should not be a defendant since the core dispute concerns OpenAI's founding, which predated Microsoft's involvement.

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