It’s Microsoft’s second within the solar as its market worth crossed the $3 trillion mark for the primary time. After Apple, Microsoft is barely the second firm ever to attain this feat.

The corporate’s Chief Government Officer, Satya Nadella, is credited with steering the corporate’s rise from $381 billion to $3 trillion over the past decade. When Nadella took over the helms at Microsoft in 2014, the corporate was stagnating and lagging in innovation, however at the moment, it’s seen as being on the forefront of the AI period, largely believed to be the following huge factor.

“The methods undertaken by Satya Nadella could also be divided into two distinct phases. Within the first section, he initiated a transformational shift in Microsoft round two key pivots, specifically agile growth and cloud supply, duly supported by a cultural shift on the organizational stage. Within the second section, the main target has been on investing in AI-driven shopper software program reminiscent of ChatGPT,” stated Deepak Kumar, founder analyst and chief analysis officer at BMNxt Enterprise and Market Advisory.

Nadella’s successful bets

Greater than the rest, Nadella’s uncanny knack for figuring out the successful horse has helped Microsoft transfer from power to power. It was his give attention to the cloud that had a transformative influence on the corporate. Nadella was heading the corporate’s cloud division earlier than taking up as its CEO and realizing its potential.

“In executing a decisive ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ technique, Satya Nadella has steered Microsoft towards a exceptional development trajectory. By prioritizing the event of cloud providers, notably exemplified by Microsoft Azure, and acknowledging the pivotal function of cell gadgets in up to date computing, Nadella strategically positioned the corporate on the forefront of technological evolution,” stated Thomas George, President, CyberMedia Group and CMR.

As per IDC, Microsoft is the world’s largest public cloud supplier, with a 17.1% market share within the first half of 2023, adopted by Amazon Net Providers (AWS) with a 12.6% market share. Nadella additionally made present merchandise like Microsoft Workplace cloud-based.

“The substantial investments directed in direction of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, underscored its ascent as a formidable contender within the fiercely aggressive cloud providers market, straight difficult established trade leaders, together with AWS. With a big foothold in enterprise and business IT stacks, this effort to encash the cloud adoption wave of person group with appropriate choices aided the expansion,” added George.

The OpenAI guess

The identical uncanny knack was once more evident when he determined to guess on AI. The funding in Sam Altman’s OpenAI in 2019 was instrumental in placing the corporate manner forward of its friends. Microsoft is believed to have invested $13 billion in OpenAI.

OpenAI disrupted the trade by launching ChatGPT in 2022. Microsoft plans to combine OpenAI’s giant language fashions throughout its merchandise. Funding in OpenAI permits Microsoft to be on the forefront of the generative AI market, which, in line with some estimates, is more likely to touch $66.62 billion in 2024. With AI all set to dominate the tech scene, Microsoft and Nadella’s stars are solely going to rise.

Final 12 months additionally noticed Nadella skilfully dealing with the departure of Sam Altman from OpenAI. He rapidly determined to rent Altman to guide Microsoft’s new AI analysis lab. On the similar time, he helped OpenAI’s board attain the consensus of getting Altman again as its CEO, a optimistic growth for Microsoft.

Through the years, Nadella has not shied away from discontinuing a failed product like Home windows Telephone. As well as, acquisitions have performed a key function in Microsoft’s development over the past ten years. The tech big has revamped 100 acquisitions, together with distinguished ones like LinkedIn and Activision, serving to the corporate domesticate a tradition of innovation.

Beneath Nadella, Microsoft has additionally deepened engagement with open-source communities. It’s the second largest contributor to open supply, as per the Open Source Contributor Index. The corporate acquired GitHub, an open-source platform, in 2018 for $7.5 billion. As per a TechCrunch report,  GitHub hit an annual recurring income of $1 billion in 2022, up from $200 to $300 million on the time of the acquisition.