Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Services-Prepackaged Software
- Listed
- Nasdaq: MSFT
- Incorporated
- WA
- Headquarters
- Redmond, WA
- Fiscal year end
- Jun 30
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- $281.7B
- Net income
- $101.8B
- Total assets
- $619.0B
| Fiscal year | Revenue | Net income | Total assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $281.7B | $101.8B | $619.0B |
| FY2024 | $245.1B | $88.1B | $512.2B |
| FY2023 | $211.9B | $72.4B | $412.0B |
| FY2021 | $168.1B | $61.3B | $333.8B |
| FY2020 | $143.0B | $44.3B | $301.3B |
| FY2019 | $125.8B | $39.2B | $286.6B |
Reported fiscal years from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
Decisions on record
18 verified Decision Cases on Microsoft, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | What Microsoft chose | Where it stood | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Standards War | License and buy existing OS | Office 2007 and Office 2010 did not implement the approved Strict variant, defaulting to the Transitional variant (2008) | Read the story → | Standards War Casebook → |
| 2001 | The Cross-Subsidy | Price Xbox below cost | improvement driven by lower Xbox console unit costs and higher-margin software sales (2005) | Read the story → | The Cross-Subsidy Casebook → |
| 2006 | The Fall | Launch incompatible new platform | all existing Zune hardware discontinued (2011-10) | Read the story → | The Fall Casebook → |
| 2009 | The Loss Leader | Pay 88% for Yahoo scale | in the 2015 Eleventh Amendment Microsoft went from exclusive to non-exclusive and Yahoo's mandatory routing dropped to a 51 percent Volume Commitment (2015-04) | Read the story → | The Loss Leader Casebook → |
| 2012 | Adjacency Expansion | Ship branded Surface PC | fell 11% in the final quarter of a seven-quarter decline streak (2024) | Read the story → | Adjacency Expansion Casebook → |
| 2013 | The Counterfactual | Acquire Nokia's phone business | Microsoft recorded $7.5 billion of impairment and restructuring charges (2015-07) | Read the story → | The Counterfactual Casebook → |
| 2013 | The Fall | Acquire Nokia devices business | a $7.6 billion impairment charge, the largest write-off in the company's history, alongside another 7,800 job cuts (2015) | Read the story → | The Fall Casebook → |
| 2013 | The Pricing Lens | Bundle Kinect mandatory | Microsoft surrendered the bundle and launched a Kinect-less Xbox One at PS4 parity after sales lagged (2014-03) | Read the story → | The Pricing Lens Casebook → |
| 2014 | Cannibalization Choice | Reweight toward cloud | Microsoft Cloud revenue hit $51.5 billion, up 26%, with Azure up 39%, while More Personal Computing slipped to $14.3 billion, down 3% (2025-12) | Read the story → | Cannibalization Choice Casebook → |
| 2014 | Succession Question | Promote insider Nadella | Too early to call | Read the story → | Succession Question Casebook → |
| 2016 | Adjacency Expansion | Acquire LinkedIn | LinkedIn data integrated into Dynamics 365, directly challenging Salesforce (2017-04) | Read the story → | Adjacency Expansion Casebook → |
| 2016 | Ecosystem Lock-in | Bundle Teams into Office 365 | Microsoft agreed to unbundle Teams for seven years and widen the price gap between Teams-included and Teams-excluded suites (2025-09) | Read the story → | Ecosystem Lock-in Casebook → |
| 2017 | Adjacency Expansion | Build subscription service | By April 2026 Microsoft had walked Ultimate back to $22.99 (2026-04) | Read the story → | Adjacency Expansion Casebook → |
| 2018 | The Fork | Fold Windows into devices group | Joe Belfiore, a VP, was named to head the Windows division nested inside Jha's group rather than led by an EVP (2018-03) | Read the story → | The Fork Casebook → |
| 2018 | The Reversal | Embrace and host open source | more than 60% of customer cores in Azure run Linux workloads (2024-04) | Read the story → | The Reversal Casebook → |
| 2019 | Bet-the-Company | Fund partner, take no control | Microsoft's stake set at roughly 27% (down from 32.5%) and OpenAI committed to $250 billion incremental Azure spending; Microsoft lost right of first refusal (2025-10) | Read the story → | Bet-the-Company Casebook → |
| 2023 | Bet-the-Company | Structure as compute lock-in | Stake fell to ~27%, IP rights extend to 2032, OpenAI committed to $250 billion more Azure (2025-10) | Read the story → | Bet-the-Company Casebook → |
| 2024 | The Pricing Lens | Remove the 300-seat floor | Too early to call | Read the story → | The Pricing Lens Casebook → |
Videos on Microsoft
Run one of these yourself
The decisions Microsoft faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
Decision ForksThe ReversalsWhen do you reverse a position, and what does a year of waiting cost?See the pack →Growth & PortfolioThe Adjacency ExpansionWhen does the business next door belong to you?See the pack →Decision ForksThe CannibalizationShould you launch the thing that takes revenue from your best business?See the pack →
The analyses
The Reversal · Decision Forks
From 'Linux Is a Cancer' to the World's Largest Open-Source Owner: Anatomy of Microsoft's Great Reversal
Microsoft spent a decade treating open source as an existential enemy. Then it bought GitHub, ran Linux at the heart of its cloud, and put a penguin on its merch. The U-turn wasn't a change of heart — it was a change of business model.
7 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
LinkedIn, GitHub, Azure: Each Microsoft Bet Was the On-Ramp to the Next
Microsoft paid $27B for LinkedIn and $7.5B for GitHub and built Azure into a $75B business. It reads like diversification. It was the opposite: each bet was the on-ramp to the next, a sequence of locks, not a spread of bets.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Surface Ate a $900 Million Write-Down Making Its Point to Dell and Lenovo
Surface launched in 2012, ate a roughly $900 million write-down in its first year, and never topped ~3.5% of Microsoft's revenue. The product everyone calls a vindication wasn't a hardware business at all - it was a sales pitch aimed at Dell and Lenovo.
7 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
A Nine-Offer Bidding War Pushed LinkedIn to $26.2 Billion; Microsoft Wanted the Graph
Microsoft paid $26.2 billion for LinkedIn in 2016 - a 50% premium over LinkedIn's pre-announcement share price, driven by a nine-offer bidding war against a rival. But the headline number hides the real prize: not the members, the graph behind them.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Game Pass Won the Revenue Bet and Lost the One That Mattered
Microsoft built a Netflix for games and hit nearly $5 billion a year by FY2025. Then it quietly stopped reporting subscribers — because growth stalled at 34 million, miles below its leaked 110-million-by-2030 dream, and the price hikes that protected the revenue started shrinking the user base.
8 min
The Cannibalization Choice · Growth & Portfolio
Kinect Sold 8 Million in 60 Days. Then Microsoft Strapped It to a Console Nobody Wanted at $499.
Kinect was the fastest-selling consumer electronics device ever recorded. So Microsoft bundled it into the Xbox One at $499 - $100 above the PS4 - and watched the accessory drag its flagship down. The sensor outlived the game it killed.
7 min
The Cannibalization Choice · Growth & Portfolio
Windows Revenue Rose While Microsoft Grew to $281.7B — a Margin Upgrade Dressed as Disruption
The legend says Microsoft killed Windows to save itself with cloud. The filings disagree: Windows revenue rose. What shrank was its share of a company that grew to $281.7B. This wasn't sacrifice — it was a margin-mix upgrade dressed as disruption.
7 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
Ballmer Overrode Microsoft's Board to Buy Nokia; the $7.5 Billion Write-Off Took Two Years
The board opposed it. The future CEO voted no. A co-founder pushed back. Steve Ballmer bought Nokia anyway — and within two years Microsoft wrote off $7.5 billion. The real failure wasn't the phone. It was the room that couldn't stop one departing executive.
7 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
Microsoft's Windows Mobile Was Second Worldwide in 2007; the Antitrust Excuse Came Later
Bill Gates calls losing mobile his biggest mistake and blames the antitrust trial. But Windows Mobile was already second worldwide at 12% in 2007. The real loss came later - and the antitrust story is the most convenient excuse he ever told.
8 min
The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention
Microsoft's Breakup Order Died When the Judge Called Gates 'Napoleonic' to Reporters
In June 2000 a federal judge ordered Microsoft split in two. Fourteen months later the breakup was vacated - not on the merits, but because the same judge talked to reporters, called Gates 'Napoleonic,' and handed Microsoft the procedural opening to keep its monopoly whole.
8 min
The Cross-Subsidy · Business Model
Microsoft's own filings called the Xbox a 'negative margin console' — Windows and Office covered the gap
Microsoft launched the Xbox in November 2001 at $299.99 and sold the hardware below cost — its own 10-K calls them 'negative margin consoles.' Two enormous software segments, Windows at $3.2 billion and Office at $2.8 billion a quarter, made those losses affordable.
7 min
The Bet · Decision Forks
Microsoft Spent $13 Billion to Become OpenAI's Best-Funded Captive Customer
Everyone calls it an alliance. The filings tell a colder story: Microsoft's commitment bought it compute dependency and no board seat, and by October 2025 its stake had been written down from 32.5% to roughly 27% — leverage steadily converting into a guaranteed bill.
8 min
The Bet · Decision Forks
Microsoft Called Its OpenAI Bet 'Immaterial' for 18 Months. That Was the Whole Strategy.
Everyone calls it Microsoft's $13B OpenAI bet. But Microsoft never confirmed the number in any SEC filing until October 2024, only $11.6B has actually been funded, and a large slice isn't cash at all - it's prepaid Azure credits. The genius wasn't the wager. It was the structure.
8 min
The Fork · Decision Forks
In 2018 Microsoft dropped 'Windows' from its top executive's title and buried the OS one level down
The March 2018 reorg is remembered as the day Microsoft 'put cloud at the center.' Cloud was already at the top table years earlier. What actually happened: Windows lost its stand-alone EVP division, got nested inside a devices group, and its name was cut from the resulting executive's title.
6 min
The Ecosystem Lock-In · Moat & Competition
Teams Passed Slack in Daily Users by July 2019 — Before the EU Complaint Was Even Filed
The legend says Teams crushed Slack with a free bundle. But Teams passed Slack in daily users in July 2019—before Slack even filed its EU complaint. The bundle didn't win the race; it ended one Slack was already losing.
8 min
The Ecosystem Lock-In · Moat & Competition
Microsoft's Windows-Office Loop Outlived the Antitrust Trial — and It's Still Running
Everyone remembers the antitrust trial. But the 1998 DOJ case was about the browser - not Office. The loop that actually locked the world in, Windows feeding Office feeding Windows, was never broken up. It's still running today.
8 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
The 1980 IBM contract barred IBM from reselling DOS — and left Microsoft free to sell it to everyone
IBM thought it owned the operating system on its new PC. It didn't. Microsoft's November 1980 contract prohibited IBM from licensing DOS to others while leaving Microsoft entirely free to do exactly that. The value was never a cheap fee. It was one asymmetric clause.
7 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
Microsoft Handed Yahoo 88% of Search Revenue in 2009 — and Wrote the Step-Ups Into the Contract
The story goes that Microsoft gave Yahoo 88% of Bing search revenue to win the 2009 deal, then clawed it back in 2015. The story is backwards: the step-up to 90% or 93% was already in the original contract, and the 2015 rewrite raised the nominal rate to 93% while cutting Yahoo's guaranteed query volume to 51%.
8 min
The Pricing Lens · Business Model
Microsoft kept Copilot's $30 seat and stacked a metered track for AI agents beside it
The story goes that Microsoft blinked on Copilot's $30-a-seat price and bolted on pay-as-you-go. But the $30 list price never moved. What Microsoft actually did was stack a metered, per-message track for AI agents beside an unchanged flagship — and quietly kill the harder friction, a 300-seat floor, a full year earlier.
6 min
The Standards War · Moat & Competition
Microsoft Won on a $75,000 OS and a Licensing Clause IBM Left Unlocked
The legend says Microsoft beat the world on better software. The record says otherwise: a $75,000 OS it didn't write, one licensing clause IBM never bothered to lock down, and a monopoly a federal appeals court ruled was maintained illegally.
8 min
The Standards War · Moat & Competition
Microsoft Won the Browser War So Completely the Government Couldn't Save the Loser.
Internet Explorer went from under 20% to over 90% of the market in roughly six years. The weapon wasn't better code - it was Windows itself. And the lawsuit that proved it ended with Microsoft keeping everything.
8 min
The Succession Question · People & Control
Microsoft's CEO search shortlisted six names — then hired the insider it had all along
Microsoft's board spent about five months and six candidates hunting for Ballmer's replacement, dangling Ford's Alan Mulally in the press. Then it named Satya Nadella, a 22-year insider — after the outsiders withdrew one by one and the search quietly drifted home.
7 min
The Fall · Crisis & Reinvention
Microsoft Abandoned Its Own Ecosystem to Launch the Zune — Revenue Fell 54% in One Holiday Season
The Zune peaked near 10% of the hard-drive MP3 market, then watched revenue fall 54% in a single holiday season. The real killer wasn't Apple. It was Microsoft abandoning its own ecosystem to launch a brown box nobody asked for.
7 min
The Fall · Crisis & Reinvention
Windows Phone Was Already Dead When Microsoft Paid $7.9 Billion to Save It
Microsoft never broke 3.4% of the global phone market, then jumped kernels mid-stream and stranded its own first buyers. The $7.9B Nokia deal wasn't a turnaround — it was an escalation of commitment the market had already overruled.
8 min
The Turnaround · Crisis & Reinvention
Microsoft Was Winning the Last War in FY2014 — Nadella Made It Fight the Next One
The legend says Satya Nadella rescued a dying company. The financials say otherwise: in FY2014 Microsoft made $27.8 billion in operating income. The real turnaround wasn't a rescue from death — it was a company that was winning the last war learning to fight the next one.
8 min
Tools to try
- Ansoff move finderFramework: Ansoff Matrix
- Business model canvas builderFramework: Business Model Canvas
- Change readiness checkFramework: Kotter's 8-Step Change Model
- Five Forces scorerFramework: Porter's Five Forces
- SMART goal builderFramework: SMART Goals
- SWOT builderFramework: SWOT Analysis
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