Major shareholders comprise co-founder Bill Gates, who stepped down from the company’s board in 2020, which is why these shares are no longer publicly reported. In 2019, Gates still owned a stake of 103 million stocks, which accounted for 1.34% of the company’s ownership (worth over $23 billion in January 2023). Other individual shareholders comprise Satya Nadella, the company’s CEO, Brad Smith (former president), Jean-Philippe Courtois (EVP), and Amy Hood (former CFO).
Table of Contents
Microsoft top shareholders
It’s important to note that in 2020, Bill Gates stepped down from the board of directors.
Thus we no longer have an exact disclosing of the company’s stock ownership.
Therefore, we can find that in 2019, when Bill Gates still owned a substantial stake in Microsoft, a stake of almost 103 million stocks worth 1.34% of the company.
In September 2022, Microsoft’s market cap was 1.76 trillion-dollar, thus making Bill Gates’ stake potentially worth more than $23 billion.
Over the last decade, Bill Gates has been selling most of Microsoft’s shares, focusing more and more on his foundation.
Therefore, we see the left stake of the company’s ownership.
Below is Microsoft’s board of directors.
Microsoft’s board of directors
How much does Microsoft’s CEO make?
Satya Nadella, in 2022, made most of his money from his performance-based compensation, which represented 96% of the total compensation. Indeed, on a base salary of $2.5 million in 2022, Nadella made in total (comprising stock awards and non-equity incentives) over $54.9 million in compensation. Compared to a compensation of $49.8 million in 2021 and $44.3 million in 2020.
Microsoft has a diversified businessmodel, spanning from Office to gaming (with Xbox), LinkedIn, search (with Bing), and enterprise services (with GitHub). In 2021, Microsoft made over $198 billion in revenues, of which over $67 billion came from Server products and cloud services, and $44.8 billion came from Office products and cloud services. Windows generated $24.7 billion, Gaming generated over $16 billion, LinkedIn over $13 billion, and search advertising (through Bing) over $11.5 billion. Enterprise (GitHub) generated $7.4 billion, and devices (PC) generated almost $7 billion.
In addition, in 2019-2023, Microsoft strengthened its partnership with OpenAI, which gave it an incredible headstart to the current AI revolution.
OpenAI and Microsoft partnered up from a commercial standpoint. The history of the partnership started in 2016 and consolidated in 2019, with Microsoft investing a billion dollars into the partnership. It’s now taking a leap forward, with Microsoft in talks to put $10 billion into this partnership. Microsoft, through OpenAI, is developing its Azure AI Supercomputer while enhancing its Azure Enterprise Platform and integrating OpenAI’s models into its business and consumer products (GitHub, Office, Bing).
Key Highlights
Major Shareholders:
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, owned a substantial stake of around 103 million stocks, accounting for 1.34% of the company’s ownership in 2019. In January 2023, his stake was worth over $23 billion.
Other individual shareholders include Satya Nadella, the CEO, Brad Smith (former president), Jean-Philippe Courtois (EVP), and Amy Hood (former CFO).
Microsoft’s CEO Compensation:
In 2022, Satya Nadella’s compensation was mainly performance-based, totaling over $54.9 million, which represented 96% of the total compensation.
The compensation package included stock awards and non-equity incentives.
Compared to previous years, Nadella’s compensation was $49.8 million in 2021 and $44.3 million in 2020.
Microsoft’s Business Model:
Microsoft has a diversified business model encompassing various segments, each contributing significantly to its revenue.
The segments include Office products and cloud services, gaming with Xbox, LinkedIn, search advertising through Bing, enterprise services with GitHub, and more.
In 2021, Microsoft’s total revenue exceeded $198 billion, with notable contributions from different segments:
Over $67 billion came from Server products and cloud services.
$44.8 billion came from Office products and cloud services.
Search advertising (Bing) generated more than $11.5 billion.
Enterprise services (GitHub) generated $7.4 billion in revenue.
Devices (PC) generated almost $7 billion in revenue.
Microsoft/OpenAI Partnership:
Microsoft and OpenAI have had a strong commercial partnership since 2016 and further consolidated it in 2019 when Microsoft invested a billion dollars into the partnership.
Currently, there are talks of Microsoft planning to invest $10 billion into the partnership, indicating a significant commitment to AI development.
Through this partnership, Microsoft is actively involved in developing its Azure AI Supercomputer.
The partnership also involves integrating OpenAI’s models into Microsoft’s business and consumer products, including GitHub, Office, and Bing.
The collaboration has given Microsoft a notable head start in the AI revolution and strengthened its position in the AI market.
In 2022, on over $198 billion in revenue, Microsoft generated over $72.7 billion. The company had over $104 billion in liquid assets (which can be easily converted into cash).
Microsoft is among the largest companies on earth, with a diversified portfolio. Owned by billionaire Bill Gates, Microsoft acquired other companies like LinkedIn, GitHub, Skype, and more over the years. Today, Microsoft is a tech empire that spans software, social media, gaming, and more.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. With over $110 billion in revenues in 2018, Office Products and Windows are still the main products. Yet the company also operates in Gaming (Xbox), Search Advertising (Bing), Hardware, LinkedIn, Cloud, and more.
Microsoft has a diversified businessmodel, spanning from Office to gaming (with Xbox), LinkedIn, search (with Bing), and enterprise services (with GitHub). In 2021, Microsoft made over $198 billion in revenues, of which over $67 billion came from Server products and cloud services, and $44.8 billion came from Office products and cloud services. Windows generated $24.7 billion, Gaming generated over $16 billion, LinkedIn over $13 billion, and search advertising (through Bing) over $11.5 billion. Enterprise (GitHub) generated $7.4 billion, and devices (PC) generated almost $7 billion.
Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft is a revolutionary company in the world of personal computing. The company designs and manufactures software, hardware, operating systems, apps, and devices. Indeed, Windows and Microsoft Office are staples in billions of homes worldwide.
Microsoft has a product-type divisional organizational structure based on functions and engineering groups. As the company scaled over time, it also became more hierarchical while maintaining its hybrid approach between functions, engineering groups, and management.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that transitioned into a for-profit organization in 2019. The corporate structure is organized around two entities: OpenAI, Inc., which is a single-member Delaware LLC controlled by OpenAI non-profit, And OpenAI LP, which is a capped, for-profit organization. The OpenAI LP is governed by the board of OpenAI, Inc (the foundation), which acts as a General Partner. At the same time, Limited Partners comprise employees of the LP, some of the board members, and other investors like Reid Hoffman’s charitable foundation, Khosla Ventures, and Microsoft, the leading investor in the LP.
OpenAI has built the foundational layer of the AI industry. With large generative models like GPT-3 and DALL-E, OpenAI offers API access to businesses that want to develop applications on top of its foundational models while being able to plug these models into their products and customize these models with proprietary data and additional AI features. On the other hand, OpenAI also released ChatGPT, developing around a freemium model. Microsoft also commercializes opener products through its commercial partnership.
OpenAI and Microsoft partnered up from a commercial standpoint. The history of the partnership started in 2016 and consolidated in 2019, with Microsoft investing a billion dollars into the partnership. It’s now taking a leap forward, with Microsoft in talks to put $10 billion into this partnership. Microsoft, through OpenAI, is developing its Azure AI Supercomputer while enhancing its Azure Enterprise Platform and integrating OpenAI’s models into its business and consumer products (GitHub, Office, Bing).
Stability AI is the entity behind Stable Diffusion. Stability makes money from our AI products and from providing AI consulting services to businesses. Stability AI monetizes Stable Diffusion via DreamStudio’s APIs. While it also releases it open-source for anyone to download and use. Stability AI also makes money via enterprise services, where its core development team offers the chance to enterprise customers to service, scale, and customize Stable Diffusion or other large generative models to their needs.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that transitioned into a for-profit organization in 2019, which comprised an entity called OpenAI LP and the non-profit parent foundation OpenAI. The lab, which was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and various others, has a core focus on the development of friendly AI that benefits society as a whole. Yet now has primarily evolved as a capped-for-profit entity with an exclusive commercial license to Microsoft.
Its co-founders primarily own Airbnb: Brian Chesky, with 76,407,686 Class B shares, which gives him 29.1% of ownership; Nathan Blecharczyk, with 232,306 Class A and 64,646,713 Class B, which give him 25.3%; and Joe Gebbia, which has 5,113,865 Class A and 58,023,452 Class B, which give him 22.9% ownership.
Google is primarily owned by its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have more than 51% voting power. Other individual shareholders comprise John Doerr (1.5%), a venture capitalist and early investor in Google, and CEO, Sundar Pichai. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has 4.2% voting power. The most prominent institutional shareholders are mutual funds BlackRock and The Vanguard Group, with 2.7% and 3.1%, respectively.
Mark Zuckerberg is the largest shareholder in the company. Zuckerberg retains ownership and control of the company. Like Google, Facebook has issued two common stocks, Class A and Class B. The holders of Class B common stocks are entitled to ten votes per share, and holders of our Class A common stocks are entitled to one vote per share. Mark Zuckerberg has a voting power of 56.9%; he’s the primary decision-maker. Other individual investors comprise Sheryl Sandberg, Christopher Cox, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin.
As of 2023, major Apple shareholders comprised Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway with 5.73% of the company’s stock (valued at over $130 billion). Followed by other individual shareholders like Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, with about 3.3 million shares, Artur Levinson, chairman of Apple, with over 4.5 million shares, and others.
With 64,588,418 shares, Jeff Bezos is the major individual investor. Owning 12.7% of the company. Other top individual investors comprise Amazon’s CEO Andy Jessy, with 94,729 shares. Top institutional investors include mutual funds like The Vanguard Group (6.6% ownership) and BlackRock (5.7% ownership).
Major shareholders comprise co-founder Bill Gates, who stepped down from the company’s board in 2020, which is why these shares are no longer publicly reported. In 2019, Gates still owned a stake of 103 million stocks, which accounted for 1.34% of the company’s ownership (worth over $23 billion in January 2023). Other individual shareholders comprise Satya Nadella, the company’s CEO, Brad Smith (former president), Jean-Philippe Courtois (EVP), and Amy Hood (former CFO).
By 2022, most of Tesla’s shares are still owned by Elon Musk, among the company’s co-founders and the CEO. Elon Musk is the top individual investor, with a 23.5% stake in the company, equivalent to over 244 million shares. Musk is followed by Lawrence Ellison (founder of Oracle), with a 1.5% company stake. Ellison also sits on Tesla’s board. And Antonio Gracias, among the company’s first investors, has over 1.6 million shares. Other institutional investors and mutual funds like The Vanguard Group (6%), Blackrock (5.1%), and Capital Ventures International also have a good chunk of the company’s stocks.
PayPal was first founded in 1998; it was called Confinity (among its founders was Peter Thiel); later, it merged with X.com, its major competitor, founded by Elon Musk (which would become known for other companies like Tesla and SpaceX). From this merger, PayPal was born. In 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. eBay spun off PayPal in 2015, which would be listed as an independent entity. Today PayPal owns brands like Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, and iZettle.
Netflix’s largest individual shareholder is Reed Hastings, co-founder, and former CEO of the company, now Chairperson of Netflix, with a 1.7% stake, valued at over $2.4 billion in February 2023. Other significant individual shareholders comprise Jay C. Hoag, the company’s directors since 1999, and Ted Sarandos, former chief content officer and now Chief Executive Officer of Netflix. Major institutional shareholders comprise The Vanguard Group (7.55% ownership), BlackRock (6.58% ownership), and Capital Research Global Investments (5.84% ownership).
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company owning several content platforms worldwide (Douyin, Toutiao, Xigua Video, Helo, Lark, Babe). Bytedance passed the $300 billion private market valuation by 2022, making around $58 billion in revenue in 2022, over $4 billion from TikTok.
Acquired by Google, in 2006, for $1.65 billion, YouTube is now worth many times over. In 2022, YouTube generated over $29 billion in revenue from advertising alone. YouTube is part of Google (now named Alphabet), and as such, it is owned by main Google’s Alphabet shareholders and is one of the fastest-growing segments for the company.
As of April 25th, 2022, Elon Musk tried to take over Twitter. Musk tried to purchase the company at $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion. The deal finally closed by October 27th, 2022, and Elon Musk became the largest shareholder.
The multi-billion music streaming company Spotify is primarily owned by its founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. As of 2023, Daniel Ek has 16.5% ownership of ordinary shares and 31.7% of the voting power. Martin Lorentzon has 10.9% of ordinary shares and 42.6% of the voting power. Another key shareholder is Baillie Gifford & Co, a Scottish-based money management firm, followed by Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, and Tencent.
The top individual shareholder of NVIDIA is Jen-Hsun Huang, founder, and CEO of the company, with 87,521,722 shares giving him 3.50% ownership. Followed by Mark A. Stevens, venture capitalist and a partner at S-Cubed Capital, who was part of the NVIDIA board in 2008 and previously served as a director from 1993 to 2006, with 6,258,803 shares. Institutional investors comprise The Vanguard Group, Inc, with 196,015,550, owning 7.83%. BlackRock, Inc., with 177,858,484, owns 7.10%. And FMR LLC (Fidelity Institutional Asset Management) with 158,039,922, owning 6.31%.
Uber’s principal individual shareholders comprise Yasir Al-Rumayyan (3.73%), the Governor of the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Dara Khosrowshahi, the founder and CEO of Uber. There is Morgan Stanley, with 5.12% ownership among the top institutional investors.
The founder and CEO of Shopify, Tobias Lütke, owned or controlled 7,891,852 Class B multiple voting shares and 5,250 Class A subordinate voting shares, representing approximately 33.8% of the aggregate voting power attached to all of the Company’s outstanding voting shares. Another key stakeholder is John H. Phillips, an angel investor who placed an early bet on Shopify.
Roblox is owned by David Baszucki and Gregory Baszucki, with a 2.3% and 2.6% stake, respectively. Anthony lee, managing partner at Altos Ventures, with a 15.3% stake.
In 2014, Twitch was bought by Amazon for $970 million. Therefore Twitch is part of Amazon, comprising other subsidiaries bought over the years, like Audible, Whole Foods, and Zappos (in total, Amazon has 12 subsidiaries). Therefore, as of 2020, Twitch is a multi-billion dollar company, making money primarily via advertising through its video streaming platform (creators use Twitch today across many other verticals).
Zoom’s principal private shareholders comprise Eric S. Yuan, a Chinese-American billionaire businessman that founded Zoom. Dan Scheinman, board member and angel investor in Zoom since the start, and Santiago Subotovsky, also an early investor in Zoom. Zoom follows a freeterprise business model where free accounts are channeled into enterprise customers.
In one of the largest deals in the business world, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion transaction. Making Microsoft the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. However, given the size of the deal, this is still under the scrutiny of regulators who need to approve it. If the deal goes through, Microsoft will become among the largest gaming companies in the world.
Pixar is owned by The Walt Disney Company, which acquired it in 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal. Today Pixar is part of the Disney Empire. The principal shareholders of Disney comprise Robert Iger, CEO of the company, and institutional investors like The Vanguard Group and Blackrock.
Marc Benioff, Co-CEO of Salesforce, is the primary individual shareholder, with 3% of the company’s stock. Other main individual shareholders comprise Parker Harris, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, and Bret Taylor, former co-CEO. Major institutional shareholders include The Vanguard Group, Fidelity, and BlackRock.
In a $27.7 billion deal in 2021, Salesforce’s finalized the acquisition of Slack, which was integrated into Salesforce. Today Slack is still a product mostly independently managed by Salesforce, which incorporated some of its features within its platform. Entrepreneur Marc Benioff primarily owns salesforce.
Evan Spiegel and Robert Cornelius Murphy are the co-founders and, respectively, CEO and CTO of Snapchat. Evan Spiegel owns 3% of Class A stocks, 25.7% of Class B stocks, and 53.4% of Class C stocks for a 53.2% voting power, whereas Robert Murphy owns 6% of Class A stocks, 25.7% of Class B stocks, and 46.6% of Class C stocks for a 46.6% voting power. Snapchat runs an advertising-based businessmodel.
Main individual shareholders comprise co-founders Brian Armstrong (59.5% voting power), Frederick Ernest Ehrsam (26.1% voting power), and other individual investors such as Surojit Chatterjee (current CPO “poached” from Google), Paul Grewal (former magistrate who joined Coinbase as Chief Legal Officer), and venture capitalists who early on invested on Coinbase, like Marc Andreessen (founder of a16z) and Fred Wilson (founder of Union Square Ventures), together with venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Ribbit Capital and Union Square Ventures.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
