American technology titan, better known for ubiquitous business software until an exclusive cloud partnership with OpenAI made it the hottest thing in big tech after ChatGPT's launch in November 2022.
Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI's for-profit entity. On October 28th 2025 the two firms struck a new agreement assigning Microsoft a 27% stake in OpenAI and entitling it to 20% of the startup's revenue and, until 2032, all its technology—including, should it materialise, superintelligence. OpenAI is now free to use any cloud partner without asking permission; in return it will spend $250bn on Microsoft's cloud computing over the next few years.
Microsoft has released AI-powered educational tools including Reading Progress (which records children reading aloud and flags mistakes) and Immersive Reader (which translates texts between languages and illustrates word meanings). A trial in 68 secondary schools in England by the Education Endowment Foundation found that science teachers equipped with ChatGPT could reduce their weekly lesson-planning time by nearly a third. Microsoft also released a tool that turns lesson plans into games in "Minecraft". In Flanders, Belgium, around 4,000 students are using Microsoft's AI reading tools.
Microsoft has taken a partnership approach to the AI stack, in contrast to Alphabet's vertically integrated model. Chipmakers like Nvidia design the GPUs; AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic devise the models; cloud hyperscalers like Microsoft and Amazon host them. Microsoft unveiled an in-house chip-design studio in 2023 and an AI lab in 2024, but its second-generation Maia chip has been delayed and its model-building is inchoate; it will be years before either becomes truly competitive.
On April 20th 2026 GitHub, a coding-collaboration site owned by Microsoft, stopped accepting new subscriptions for its programming bot, owing to AI capacity constraints. Microsoft said it would offer voluntary redundancies to about 7% of its workers to free up cash for data-centre investment.
Microsoft signed a long-term deal to restart a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island to supply its data centres. In one of its Irish data centres, it uses backup batteries as a "grid stabiliser" that can push power back into the network or draw excess power from it at times of stress—a technique that lets utilities lower rates for households while preserving their margins.
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.