Microsoft Founded
Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico
April 04, 1975
Two Childhood Friends and a Bold Vision
Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The two had been friends since meeting at Lakeside School in Seattle as teenagers, bonding over their shared fascination with computers at a time when most people had never seen one. The founding of Microsoft came after Gates and Allen read about the Altair 8800, a new personal computer kit, on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975. Allen spotted the magazine and rushed to show Gates. They contacted the manufacturer, MITS, and claimed to have a programming language ready for the machine. They didn't. They wrote it in the following weeks and successfully demonstrated it, landing their first contract.
The Deal That Changed Everything
Microsoft moved to the Seattle area in 1979. The company's defining moment came in 1980, when IBM approached Microsoft to provide an operating system for its upcoming personal computer. Microsoft purchased an operating system called QDOS from a local company for $50,000, adapted it, and licensed it to IBM as MS-DOS. Crucially, Microsoft retained the right to license MS-DOS to other manufacturers, meaning that as IBM-compatible PCs spread around the world, Microsoft's operating system came with virtually all of them. This decision made Microsoft one of the most powerful companies in the technology industry within a decade.
Building a Software Empire
By the mid-1980s, Microsoft had added productivity software to its business, including early versions of Word and Excel. The launch of Windows in 1985 began the shift from MS-DOS to a graphical interface. Windows 95 became a cultural event, with customers lining up at midnight to buy copies. By the late 1990s, Microsoft was one of the most valuable companies in the world and faced a landmark antitrust case from the U.S. government over its business practices. Paul Allen left the company in 1983 due to illness and later became a technology investor and philanthropist. Bill Gates stepped back from daily operations in 2000 to focus on philanthropy through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.