A Primer on Microsoft
Microsoft has spent fifty years building platforms that sit underneath the modern economy. BASIC made early computers usable. MS DOS and Windows standardized personal computing. Office and Azure be...
Microsoft has spent fifty years building platforms that sit underneath the modern economy.
BASIC made early computers usable. MS DOS and Windows standardized personal computing. Office became the core productivity layer for organizations. Today, Azure is the platform that ties the company together and anchors its role in the AI era.
In working through this primer, one thing became clear. Microsoft’s strategy has been consistent: build a platform, attract developers and enterprises to it, and reinvest the resulting cash flow into infrastructure that strengthens the platform. Azure is the latest and most important expression of that approach.
Azure drives a meaningful share of Microsoft’s revenue growth. The company reports the specific impact of AI on Azure’s expansion each quarter, and the contribution has grown steadily over the past year. This gives a concrete view into how AI demand is shaping the business, rather than relying on headlines or broad claims.
Around Azure sits the rest of the ecosystem. Microsoft 365, Dynamics, LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft Gaming all reinforce the platform by adding usage, workflow depth, and data that feed back into Azure. Each business adds data, usage, or workflow depth that feeds back into the platform. The result is a system that is both financially predictable and deeply embedded in how companies operate.
This Microsoft primer is a clear breakdown of how they built a sequence of platforms from Windows to Azure, how Azure evolved into sovereign-grade digital infrastructure, and how the company’s reinvestment model and compliance footprint position it to play a central role in the AI era.
It is also the final installment in our A Primer on Magnificent 7 series. Our goal with this series is simple: take you from zero knowledge to a grounded understanding of each of the most important technology companies in the world. We focus on history, business structure, financial drivers, and the strategic choices shaping each company’s future.
Links to the rest of the Mag 7 Substack writeup: NVIDIA, Tesla, Meta, Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Let me know in the group chat on what you think of this Primer series and what topics you’d like to learn with me next.
Hope you enjoy reading.
Chamath
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed above are current as of the date of this document and are subject to change without notice. Materials referenced above will be provided for educational purposes only. None of the above will include investment advice, a recommendation or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or investment products.
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