April 2025

Light the candles and break out the bubbly – Microsoft turned the big 5-0 this month!

When Bill Gates and Paul Allen launched their small startup in 1975, they couldn’t have known how their vision of a personal computer on every desk would bring a transformational tidal wave to technology.

Since then, we’ve seen a half-century of innovations that have changed our world – from the Altair BASIC language that started it all to AI agents – and how we interact with it.

This month, we’ll highlight a few of them. We’ll open a window onto Microsoft’s journey over the past 50 years, share a vista of some groundbreaking AI innovations and tell you about a slew of new features that will make your trusted AI companion your very own.

Along the way, we’ll do our best to excel as a copilot. Just don’t get clippy with us. Word.

At 50, we’re not slowing down – we’re just getting started. So put on your party hat and help us make some noise. Cheers to 50 years!

Walking through Harvard Square in early 1975, friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen spotted a copy of Popular Electronics magazine and were inspired by the early personal computer on its cover.

The friends launched Microsoft in April 1975 to produce software for the Altair 8800, creating an interpreter for BASIC computer language to translate code into instructions – which became Microsoft’s first product. From that small startup in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a global technology leader was born.

During the 1980s, Microsoft introduced MS-DOS, an operating system that became the foundation for personal computing, launched Windows and moved its headquarters to Redmond, Washington. By the late ‘80s, Microsoft was the world’s largest personal computer software company.

In the 1990s, Microsoft launched Office and started up Windows 95, revolutionizing the PC industry with new features and a user-friendly interface. Microsoft acquired Hotmail and introduced MSN Messenger, helping bring digital communications to the masses, and made Solitaire part of Windows 3.0 to get customers used to an unfamiliar new desktop item: the mouse.

Many more milestones followed. Steve Ballmer became CEO. Xbox blazed Microsoft’s path into the gaming world. Office 365 transformed business operations with cloud-based productivity tools, and the launch of the Surface computer established Microsoft as an innovator in hardware as well as software.

Satya Nadella became Microsoft’s third CEO in 2014, taking us to new cloud heights and bringing the power of AI to our fingertips. The Microsoft Azure platform expanded cloud computing to a wide range of services, helping businesses build, manage and deploy applications globally.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s innovations in AI continued apace, from the launch of Bing with natural language capabilities to a new supercomputer hosted in Azure and the creation of GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered coding assistant.

A new set of AI-powered technologies, now called Azure AI Foundry, enabled developers to build smarter apps that use face detection, voice recognition and language understanding. And a Microsoft Research breakthrough for training deep neural networks set the standard for computer vision technology now widely used in applications from self-driving cars to medical imaging.

AI advancements paved the way for Microsoft Copilot, the AI companion that’s become an indispensable tool in workplaces and homes around the world. Just a year after its launch, Microsoft 365 Copilot was being used by nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies. AI now plays an important role in our mission of empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.

If there wasn’t enough to celebrate this month, we announced capabilities designed to make Copilot a true personalized AI companion, including:

• Memory, an opt-in feature that allows Copilot to remember information like birthdays and favorite foods and offer personalized suggestions and reminders.
• Actions, which allows Copilot to perform tasks like making dinner reservations, booking tickets or sending gifts to friends using simple chat prompts.
• Pages, which takes your notes, research and other content and puts it in a canvas that Copilot organizes.
• Personalized podcasts created by Copilot based on your interests; while listening, you can talk with Copilot to ask questions and learn more.

As we wrap up this month, we’re celebrating our successes and saluting the people behind the technology – the innovators, trailblazers and visionaries who have made Microsoft what it is today.

Here’s to you all, and to the next 50 years!

AI gets to work

It so happens that the year we’re celebrating our 50th birthday is also the year 82% of business leaders say will be pivotal to rethinking strategy and operations. Our 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that we’re entering a new reality – one in which AI can reason and solve problems in remarkable ways.

To explore what work could become, Microsoft analyzed data from 31,000 workers in 31 countries, LinkedIn trends and Microsoft productivity data, and spoke with AI-native startups, thought leaders and others. Read the full Work Trend Index Annual Report on WorkLab.

Copilot-assisted justice

Colombian judge María Victoria Quiñones believes justice “should be swift” – and AI helps her ensure that happens. 

Quiñones is a proponent of using AI for judicial processes in Colombia, where judges had an average workload of more than 800 cases in 2023. She trains judges, law students and employees on AI, and uses Microsoft Copilot daily for everything from summarizing hearings to comparing rulings and drafting documents. 

Quiñones is among 20 Colombian judges using Copilot in Teams under a beta program aimed at streamlining their work. She’s getting promising results – she can now issue up to 20 rulings weekly, compared with just four before adopting Copilot. 

“For us, this is magic,” Quiñones says. “These tools have come to facilitate and improve judicial work.”

Hotter than the sun 

Picture a giant doughnut-shaped cylinder containing super-hot plasma that burns with the same energy that fuels the sun. 

That structure is at the heart of the world’s largest nuclear fusion plant, and AI is playing an integral role in its development. The ITER project, in southern France, aims to create a proof-of-concept reactor powered by nuclear fusion – the combining of atoms to make what could become a source of affordable, carbon-free energy. 

The project is using AI to analyze data on the construction of the cylinder, which will hold 100-million-degree Celsius plasma, to ensure the quality of its welds and analyze the materials that will line the vessel. AI is also helping with research, predictive modeling and improving safety protocols on the project. 

AI skin boost

Wondering if snail mucin or cica is better for your skin? Wonder no more.

South Korean beauty giant Amorepacific – with brands like Innisfree and Sulwhasoo – is rolling out a generative AI app called the AI Beauty Counselor (AIBC) to answer all your beauty questions, based on your purchase history, an online skin analysis and a chat with the AIBC.

The app is built on Microsoft’s Azure AI Stack and will go live soon on the company’s online Amore Mall. The goal is to provide the kind of personalized advice you might get from a salesperson at a beauty counter.

“We want to provide the same level of service that (customers) get offline in the online environment,” says Seongbong Hong, chief digital technology officer of Amorepacific.

Between issues, follow the Microsoft News and Stories LinkedIn page for the latest company news, or visit us at Microsoft Source to learn about people doing extraordinary things with technology.