Microsoft
Numbers
What the show said, with receipts
Every figure the hosts put on the record for Microsoft, with its source and the date it was captured. The audited statements from the company's own filings are under Financials.
Freshness
0
Current (≤6 mo)
0
Recent (≤18 mo)
5
Older
Freshness is measured from each figure’s capture date, not from the episode date. An older figure is not wrong; it is a figure that has had time to move.
Reported figures
Market cap (2024 peak)
3 yr~$3.3T
briefly overtook Apple as the world's most valuable public company
[Bloomberg 2024] · as of 2024-01
- David:Microsoft is now one of only a very small number of companies that have ever been worth over three trillion dollars.[Acquired Microsoft Volume II]
Price paid for MS-DOS
47 yr$50,000
Gates bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and licensed it to IBM without giving IBM exclusivity
[Acquired Microsoft I] · as of 1980
- David:Critically, crucially, the most important business decision in the history of Microsoft: Bill negotiates to license DOS to IBM non-exclusively. So Microsoft can license DOS to other manufacturers.[Acquired Microsoft I, ch. The IBM deal]
Intelligent Cloud revenue (FY2024)
2 yr~$105B
Azure + server products, now larger than the original Windows/Office business
[Microsoft FY2024 annual results] · as of 2024-06
Microsoft 365 commercial seats
3 yr~400M+
dominant enterprise productivity suite; switching costs compound with every year a user's files and workflows stay inside Office
[Microsoft FY2024 disclosures] · as of 2024
Total return under Ballmer (CEO 2000–2014)
13 yr~flat
Microsoft stock returned roughly 0% over 14 years even as revenue tripled — the market priced missed mobile + search bets
[Acquired Steve Ballmer Interview + public record] · as of 2014
- Guest:During those 14 years the stock didn't go up. Revenue tripled. But the stock price didn't change. And I think partly you could argue that there were places where I just got it wrong.[Acquired Steve Ballmer Interview]