Speaker 1: I was not prepared for how cold it would be here.
Speaker 2: Hawhi girl and me is dying today. I'm on Microsoft's
Speaker 2: campus in Redmond, Washington.
Speaker 3: Ran It's so wonderful to be here with all of you.
Speaker 4: Is celebrating fifty years of Microsoft.
Speaker 2: The company just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and Bill Gates,
Speaker 2: Steve Balmer, and Sachiinadella, the three CEOs who've led the
Speaker 2: company over those five decades, were all there to celebrate.
Speaker 5: I wrote more code than either of these guys.
Speaker 2: In March twenty fourteen, a month after Sachiinadella took over
Speaker 2: as CEO, Steve Balmer told an audience at the Oxford
Speaker 2: Union that his main requirement when finding a successor was ambition.
Speaker 6: There's an old movie they say relationships are like sharks.
Speaker 6: They either move forward or they die. Well, I can
Speaker 6: tell you technology businesses are like sharks too. You either
Speaker 6: move forward ambitiously or poof.
Speaker 2: Microsoft's business has thrived under Sacynadella. Microsoft hire after beating
Speaker 2: on almost every metric.
Speaker 6: This is once again as you just saving the day.
Speaker 6: What a time to be a holder of Microsoft shares.
Speaker 6: A stock has just performed phenomenally.
Speaker 2: But With the emergence of AI, the company faces arguably
Speaker 2: the most transformative era in technology yet. On this week's
Speaker 2: episode of the Circuit, we had a chance to dive
Speaker 2: into the past, present, and future of Microsoft, and here
Speaker 2: on the podcast, we're sharing our interviews with the three
Speaker 2: CEOs who made the company what it is today. First up,
Speaker 2: Microsoft co founder Bill Gates. Ready, okay, Bill, Happy birthday,
Speaker 2: Thank you fifty years. You're known for your predictions. What's
Speaker 2: the most surprising thing to you about today? Like something
Speaker 2: you didn't predict?
Speaker 5: Well, I, ever since I started Microsoft, I've always thought,
Speaker 5: oh my goodness, what is it we might miss? You know,
Speaker 5: so there have been so many twists and turns in
Speaker 5: the technological road. When I was in charge, you know,
Speaker 5: I set up all night thinking, you know, we're going
Speaker 5: to miss this, We're going to miss that. The fact
Speaker 5: that we've been able to navigate this changing environment, first
Speaker 5: under my leadership, then understy Bamber's and now Undersat is
Speaker 5: kind of a miracle to me. You know, we've always
Speaker 5: had smart people. I did that software is important. We
Speaker 5: were truly right about that. But you know, here we are,
Speaker 5: and now you know, the road's got all these AI
Speaker 5: twists and turns that saught to you with a little
Speaker 5: bit of advice from Steve, and I gets to drive
Speaker 5: the car around these curves.
Speaker 2: There's been so much reminiscing on stage. We heard a
Speaker 2: lot of fun old sounds. Be honest, do you still
Speaker 2: get excited when you hear the Windows startup sound?
Speaker 7: It reminds me of a magic time. You know.
Speaker 5: It was right here on the Microsoft campus that we
Speaker 5: had that Windows ninety five introduction. You know, we had
Speaker 5: jay Leno and it was kind of maybe the time
Speaker 5: when people realized Microsoft was quite a unique company. That
Speaker 5: office had come together, the graphics, c inerface had come together,
Speaker 5: you know, on all the different systems, whether it was Apple,
Speaker 5: Macintosh or Windows on the PC, we were providing the
Speaker 5: top application. So that was definitely a fun day that
Speaker 5: showed that we.
Speaker 7: Had some special sauce.
Speaker 1: So it's nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: What's going on inside Bill's bring, Like, did you and
Speaker 2: Paul think you had something this big in your hands?
Speaker 5: Well, we knew that software would be important, you know,
Speaker 5: we said when people thought it was crazy, a computer
Speaker 5: on every desk and in every home, and so we
Speaker 5: saw this tool of empowerment We're always worried that once
Speaker 5: somebody realized what we realized, that they might you know,
Speaker 5: do a good job as well. So, you know, why
Speaker 5: didn't IBM, who had all the capital in the world
Speaker 5: and great people, why couldn't they do what we did?
Speaker 5: And we thought, well, we're more dedicated to software. We're
Speaker 5: going to hire you know, energetic people, We're going to
Speaker 5: price this stuff super super low and make it available
Speaker 5: to everyone. But we were you know, humble about how
Speaker 5: unique we would be, knowing though that software and software
Speaker 5: empowerment was the coolest thing going on, and even today,
Speaker 5: if you look at you know, which companies are valuable,
Speaker 5: it's really the ones that have ridden that digital software
Speaker 5: empowerment wave. So our vision really was as true as
Speaker 5: we could have dreamed.
Speaker 2: What was the scariest this might not work moment along
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 5: Well, there were times in our relationship with IBM that
Speaker 5: were very complicated, Very early on in the history of
Speaker 5: the company, which I talked about in source Code. We
Speaker 5: had a dispute with our customer. They weren't pain us,
Speaker 5: and so you know, thereafter I said, I'm going to
Speaker 5: have enough money in the bank to pay everyone salary
Speaker 5: for a year, even if nobody pays me anything. So
Speaker 5: I was very conservative financially, and you know, we're lucky
Speaker 5: that software business until it comes to these cloud days.
Speaker 5: It wasn't a very capital intensive business.
Speaker 2: Wasn't there a point where you couldn't pay for the
Speaker 2: chairs and they were literally pulling the chairs out from underneath.
Speaker 5: That's okay, that's even before Microsoft. That's when I was
Speaker 5: in high school. We were always trying to find computers.
Speaker 5: And the company that was here in Seattle using a
Speaker 5: great computer, had a deal that if we could find bugs,
Speaker 5: they wouldn't have to pay for their computer. Unfortunately, they
Speaker 5: didn't find enough customers, so they went bankrupt. And so
Speaker 5: we saw, you know that even great companies like Winging Computer,
Speaker 5: which was incredible, you know, disappeared. We actually had that
Speaker 5: sense of, okay, you've got to be very careful in
Speaker 5: order to survive ups and downs.
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear how you reflect on Microsoft era's
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift style. So humor me, what would be the
Speaker 2: chapter of each what would be the title of each
Speaker 2: chapter or era, and what was a lesson that you
Speaker 2: learned in each?
Speaker 5: Well, there's the early what i'll call eight bit computers.
Speaker 5: Where it went to where you know today people probably
Speaker 5: remember the Apple two, the TRSAD, the Commodore pat. Those
Speaker 5: were the first computers that sold literally in the millions,
Speaker 5: and all of them included Microsoft basics. So the reason
Speaker 5: you could write a program try things out was because
Speaker 5: because we'd worked with each of those companies. Then the
Speaker 5: IBM PC comes along, and we work with IBM and
Speaker 5: do all the software for that, including the operating system.
Speaker 5: The power is stepped up, and you know, so the
Speaker 5: applications are more demanding. You start to have big discs,
Speaker 5: hard disks. Then we get to the graphics interface era,
Speaker 5: and this is where Windows and the Macintosh come in
Speaker 5: and your interface instead of just being a bunch of characters,
Speaker 5: you get the mouse, you get whatever you want. That's
Speaker 5: where Windows ninety five and Office ninety five come in,
Speaker 5: and that is an incredible period. Then the Internet phase
Speaker 5: starts and people are like, okay, does Microsoft get the
Speaker 5: browser and the Internet and all these things? And we
Speaker 5: managed to show that we did. Then after that, I'd say,
Speaker 5: you know, the cloud computing peace becomes very big.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, Amazon does a very good job with that.
Speaker 5: At the start, Microsoft comes in with Azure. You know
Speaker 5: and now here we are at the beginnings of the
Speaker 5: AI era.
Speaker 2: I understand that you spent a lot of time succession
Speaker 2: planning and passing the rains, planning to pass the rains.
Speaker 2: What's the key to building a company that outlast its founder.
Speaker 5: Well, we're very lucky that, you know, Steve worked with
Speaker 5: me for a long time, and so when he took over,
Speaker 5: I stayed for eight years as chief technical officer.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: And he did an incredible job nurturing a lot of
Speaker 5: candidates you know, sought to emerge. Is the clear choice.
Speaker 5: Both Steve and I were very clear that he was
Speaker 5: the right person. He very much stood out uh. Uh,
Speaker 5: and he's actually exceeded our expectations. Now he gets to
Speaker 5: pick the fourth CEO. He's got an incredible team of
Speaker 5: people that, you know, help him do the job. It's
Speaker 5: a much more complex job today. I have to say,
Speaker 5: I'm in great admiration uh for how zen he is that,
Speaker 5: you know, picking the things he's going to focus on
Speaker 5: and all the you know, uh choices.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: He's very good about drawing both Steve and I in,
Speaker 5: you know, so whatever expertise we have, uh, he gets
Speaker 5: the benefit of that, you know. So I think he's
Speaker 5: kind of a model. He's he's do He wasn't there
Speaker 5: in the early days, and yet you know, of all
Speaker 5: the tech companies, I think he's he's been the best
Speaker 5: at caring Ford. Even the original spirit of what made
Speaker 5: Microsoft special.
Speaker 2: Looking back, it wasn't always easy. I mean Microsoft went
Speaker 2: through some tough times. You went through some tough times,
Speaker 2: You were criticized for your aggressive business tactics and being
Speaker 2: anti competitive.
Speaker 1: How do you reflect on that period?
Speaker 5: Well, we were so successful and one of the great
Speaker 5: rewards if you're you know that successful, is the government
Speaker 5: comes in and says, okay, you know, do they have
Speaker 5: to do things to help out your competitors?
Speaker 7: Did you follow all those rules? So yes.
Speaker 5: At that same time as the Internet error was coming
Speaker 5: along in the nineties, we were involved in a US
Speaker 5: government lawsuit and I put a lot of time into that.
Speaker 5: Originally Bill Nucum was our top layer. Then Brad Smith
Speaker 5: came along, and you know, those weren't ec days. It's
Speaker 5: pretty amazing. There was never any period where we were
Speaker 5: losing money. You know, Microsoft, We've never had a year
Speaker 5: where we lost money. And so the financial strength because
Speaker 5: we were so right about software and we were so
Speaker 5: good about building up globally that we had the problem
Speaker 5: you could says sort of, you know, kind of a
Speaker 5: problem of hyper success, and we were able to work
Speaker 5: a settlement out with the government, and you know, we've
Speaker 5: been a lot more aware of Okay, let's constantly be
Speaker 5: in touch with the governments around the world, make sure
Speaker 5: they're good with what we're doing. And so we haven't
Speaker 5: had anything intense like we did there in the late nineties.
Speaker 2: You've seen how text form factor has changed over the
Speaker 2: years as technology has progressed from the PC to laptops
Speaker 2: to phones. How do you see AI transforming software and
Speaker 2: what will be the ultimate form factor?
Speaker 5: Well, in a way, you won't even think about the
Speaker 5: form factor. I mean, you'll certainly have something in your ear,
Speaker 5: you know, you'll have something in your glasses. All the
Speaker 5: different wall surfaces will be able to light up as displays,
Speaker 5: you know, wherever you are, and we'll see, okay, there's
Speaker 5: a display over there. I can put the information there
Speaker 5: for you, so it'll be a bit more disembodied that
Speaker 5: your agent will interact with you just voice to voice
Speaker 5: as you're walking down the street, or you can pull
Speaker 5: out a phone size screen uh, you know, have projections
Speaker 5: onto the glasses and so the hardware piece.
Speaker 7: Will just kind of be seamless.
Speaker 5: But the software has got to work on every one
Speaker 5: of those form factors. You're not going to have one
Speaker 5: agent on the phone another one on your PC. It'll
Speaker 5: be holistic because it'll know you your preferences. You'll trust it
Speaker 5: to help do things for you.
Speaker 1: How will the AI wars play out?
Speaker 2: Like does it feel different than the mobile or the
Speaker 2: browser wars?
Speaker 1: Like who wins?
Speaker 7: We well, we don't know.
Speaker 5: We know that the level of investment by the leading
Speaker 5: companies is pretty mind blowing. You know, Google's a great company,
Speaker 5: Microsoft Open Ai, you know we're out there, you know
Speaker 5: every day, you know, making Copilot better, and we saw
Speaker 5: a lot of great demos of you know how that's evolving.
Speaker 5: I do a lot of product reviews with Mustafa and
Speaker 5: the other key Microsoft engineering leads. You give them my
Speaker 5: advice on trying to make Copilot be the best it
Speaker 5: can be.
Speaker 2: You joked on stage that Copilot might be the CEO
Speaker 2: in fifty years. But more seriously, you've said that the
Speaker 2: age of complete human dominance will be over in ten years.
Speaker 3: What does that really.
Speaker 1: Mean for us?
Speaker 5: Well, what it means goes beyond you know which company
Speaker 5: actually delivers that or what their stock price is. It's
Speaker 5: a much more profound thing than just like the Browser Wars,
Speaker 5: where I mean it didn't matter to people really who
Speaker 5: won the Browser Wars. Here, the capacity, the intelligence will
Speaker 5: give humans a lot of choices. You know, we won't
Speaker 5: have a shortage of mental health therapists or people who
Speaker 5: can help us plan things, and.
Speaker 7: So it'll three up a lot of time.
Speaker 5: It'll give us ways of being educated that we've never
Speaker 5: had before. I in my Foundation work are thrilled that
Speaker 5: in places where you don't have as many teachers available,
Speaker 5: you don't have doctors available, that we'll make sure that
Speaker 5: the brilliant work here gets out to even the lowest
Speaker 5: income countries at about the same time it's getting out
Speaker 5: to the very, very rich countries. And so my work
Speaker 5: for Microsoft helps me inform how the Foundation can play
Speaker 5: its unique role.
Speaker 2: You release some of the original code for Microsoft, and
Speaker 2: I'm so curious how you think about what should kids
Speaker 2: be studying these days?
Speaker 1: Like should kids still be learning how to code?
Speaker 2: Or is this the beginning of the end of programming
Speaker 2: as we know it?
Speaker 5: Well, you always want to understand the underlying things. You know,
Speaker 5: like mathematics is important even though the computers you can
Speaker 5: do the multiplications faster than you can. You know, for
Speaker 5: anybody who's interested understanding AI and how it works, you know,
Speaker 5: I think there's great value in seeing, Okay, whatever it's shortcomings,
Speaker 5: what do we still need to do even to be
Speaker 5: very good at using AI as a tool the same
Speaker 5: way that you know, Microsoft Office became sort of a
Speaker 5: basic set of skills. Now working with these AI agents,
Speaker 5: including Copilot, is you know, how you can actually organize
Speaker 5: your learning, advance your learning, and think, okay, this is
Speaker 5: how I would use this in the job I'm going
Speaker 5: to have.
Speaker 2: So what's going to be the IT job of the future.
Speaker 2: If it was a software programmer in your era.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm not sure there's any IT job. I mean,
Speaker 5: you don't want somebody If you love math and software, great,
Speaker 5: go be a software programmer. But that was you know,
Speaker 5: the percentage of the labor market that was, you know,
Speaker 5: nerding people like me. You know, where you'd be writing code,
Speaker 5: you know, is pretty modest. If you love that, great,
Speaker 5: you know, you're always the thing that you like, whether
Speaker 5: it's you know, being artistic or being a great communicator,
Speaker 5: or you know, understanding you know how people get sick
Speaker 5: and counseling them. That all about those capabilities where you
Speaker 5: bring it as a human I think will still be
Speaker 5: fairly important. But it is a period where answering these
Speaker 5: questions is probably harder than at any time in history.
Speaker 2: Humor me for a moment about you know, what's going
Speaker 2: on in the in the broader world right now, President Trump?
Speaker 1: These new tariffs doge? Is he going to be good.
Speaker 2: For the economy, good for innovation? And how do you
Speaker 2: think this moment will go down in American history?
Speaker 5: Well, there's you know a lot of things are being changed.
Speaker 5: You know, I think the willingness to look at some
Speaker 5: government things and say they should change. You know, there's
Speaker 5: nothing wrong with that, but you know, being careful about Okay,
Speaker 5: let's change the things we should and preserve some of
Speaker 5: the things that are good. And you know, my full
Speaker 5: time work is the Gates Foundation, and there I'm in
Speaker 5: a constant dialogue with the administration about Okay, how are
Speaker 5: they reshaping their aid programs? You know, are they willing
Speaker 5: to preserve some significant portion of those?
Speaker 7: You know? And I think we'll figure that out.
Speaker 5: I think the US wants to be helpful to everyone
Speaker 5: in the world to help save lives.
Speaker 7: You know, we have a history.
Speaker 5: Actually, President Bush started a program that saved tens of
Speaker 5: millions of lives in the US, has helped buy vaccines
Speaker 5: for children, and so that's where I have my deep
Speaker 5: involvement because I put my money into those things, and
Speaker 5: the US government, you know, has always been a fantastic partner.
Speaker 2: How confident are you that AI's promise will outweigh the perils.
Speaker 5: I'm not confident, but the you know, that's that's what
Speaker 5: we need to get oriented around. That's why I was
Speaker 5: surprised to I wasn't really an issue in the last election.
Speaker 5: It's definitely got to be shaped, you know. Mastafa Suliman
Speaker 5: has a book that warns of some of the challenges
Speaker 5: called The Coming Age. Read Hoffmann, a Microsoft board member,
Speaker 5: has a book Superagency, that talks about some of the promise.
Speaker 5: I'd say both of those are worth reading because they're
Speaker 5: both right. It's very promising, but it will bring new
Speaker 5: challenges along with it.
Speaker 2: So you know, all of that considered, what in your mind,
Speaker 2: what is Microsoft in fifty more years? Like, will Microsoft
Speaker 2: change the world again.
Speaker 5: Well, we're in the process of change in the world again.
Speaker 5: Just you know, the way that customers today are able
Speaker 5: to automate things, the way that you know all these tools,
Speaker 5: and you know Microsoft's putting out eighty billion dollars of investment.
Speaker 5: You know, clearly that's the sense that, Wow, we have
Speaker 5: something that customers are going to want or we'll to
Speaker 5: invest at a level that's completely unheard of. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's it's a pretty mind blowing number.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, you're famous for your predictions. Hearing you
Speaker 2: say you're not confident is kind of scary.
Speaker 5: Oh, people should think through how is AI going to
Speaker 5: reshape our lives?
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 5: It is a profound change agent. And uh, you know,
Speaker 5: I don't think it should just be the people who
Speaker 5: know the technology, because there's a lot of choices about
Speaker 5: how it gets used. It will change learning, it will
Speaker 5: change the job market, and you know, I think we
Speaker 5: can shape that in.
Speaker 7: The right way.
Speaker 5: But it'll be you know, just like nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, it'll.
Speaker 7: Challenge us.
Speaker 2: Bill Gates, thank you so much for doing this. On
Speaker 2: that optimistic note, here's to another fifty years. Congratulations, Thank you,
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bill. After the break Steve Balmer and now
Speaker 2: my extended conversation with former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer. So, Steve,
Speaker 2: you brought it on stage, but at your twenty fifth
Speaker 2: anniversary you jumped out of a cake.
Speaker 1: I want to do over.
Speaker 7: I didn't even remember that.
Speaker 6: I'm not.
Speaker 2: How did it feel to be all back together for
Speaker 2: the first time in a while.
Speaker 6: It felt good, It felt really good.
Speaker 7: Actually, you know, it.
Speaker 6: Wasn't just being together, but it was in a particular setting,
Speaker 6: a little reminiscing, but a lot of future Because for Bill,
Speaker 6: for me and Forsatya, it is great to reminisce, but
Speaker 6: we're always thinking about, Okay, what happens tomorrow, what's going
Speaker 6: to happen tomorrow? Will the company keep going? And we
Speaker 6: had a chance not only to do a little reminiscing,
Speaker 6: but at least amongst the three of us had a
Speaker 6: little on stage.
Speaker 2: I understand that that Bill spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: succession planning when he handed the rings to you, and
Speaker 2: that you also spent a lot of time succession planning
Speaker 2: when you pass the rings to Satya. What's the key
Speaker 2: to building a company that outlasts its founder? You know,
Speaker 2: talk to me about how deliberate you were about that process.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, kind of super deliberate at my level. No,
Speaker 6: I didn't found the company.
Speaker 1: But fear like the heart of the company, but just about.
Speaker 6: I mean, there were only thirty people when I joined.
Speaker 6: I had a chance to shape the whole culture of
Speaker 6: the place when it was small, and so in a sense,
Speaker 6: I think Satya takes that burden of being the first
Speaker 6: completely separate, and I think he's done a fantastic job.
Speaker 6: And I will say put he having him available to
Speaker 6: take the job and doing such a good job, that's
Speaker 6: kind of accomplishment one the company. Everything three times is big.
Speaker 6: Revenue three times is big. Profit is three market caps
Speaker 6: more than three times, it's big. All good by me.
Speaker 6: I was joking with Sachi. He was talking about their
Speaker 6: kind of executive retreat whatever. They got about three times
Speaker 6: as many people at that than we had when I left.
Speaker 6: So you know, everything is scaled so much. It's amazing.
Speaker 6: And it's because you know, if you look at Sachi's career,
Speaker 6: we're actually pretty deliberate about getting him. You know, it
Speaker 6: was clear early how talent he was. So if you
Speaker 6: look at the number of areas in which he worked,
Speaker 6: he worked in our search business, he worked in the
Speaker 6: business applications area, he worked in servant tools, and so
Speaker 6: it's experience culture, and if Microsoft's going to be here
Speaker 6: even in ten or fifteen years, it'll be innovation serving
Speaker 6: customers culture.
Speaker 2: It wasn't always easy between you and Bill. You've talked
Speaker 2: about the times you didn't speak to each other, like
Speaker 2: what happened and what did you learn from that?
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's let me put it this way,
Speaker 6: the day I walked out and retired was the day
Speaker 6: I retired. I think I went to one more board
Speaker 6: meeting after that, but it was super important to let
Speaker 6: Satchya have his space. And I think that was a
Speaker 6: key learning because when Bill and I we sort of
Speaker 6: had a long handoff. I was CEO in two thousand
Speaker 6: and then he announced in oh four he's going to
Speaker 6: leave completely, but that wasn't until eight and so in
Speaker 6: a sense, the long goodbye, I think is difficult because
Speaker 6: role reversal is difficult. And I think i'd learned that
Speaker 6: enough to say, look, I love you. I might think
Speaker 6: I have a lot you can learn from me. And
Speaker 6: I said to him, but don't listen to old CEOs,
Speaker 6: former CEOs or former CEOs. You're going to know what
Speaker 6: to do, and anything you don't know, you're going to
Speaker 6: figure out. And you know, you'll call or I'll call
Speaker 6: and we'll brainstorm something. But he's the expert, and all
Speaker 6: I'm doing is sort of throwing in ideas that you know,
Speaker 6: I'm a relatively smart guy. I know a little bit.
Speaker 6: But ultimately he's got to assemble all of this stuff.
Speaker 6: And I think getting a little separation was good, and
Speaker 6: I learned that from the more difficult separation of eight
Speaker 6: years that Bill and I had. I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 6: difficult in all eight years, but you know, it made
Speaker 6: it harder.
Speaker 2: I think, you know I miss bomber style product launches.
Speaker 1: You have to miss it. Do you miss it?
Speaker 6: Well, I just did a big product launch. It's called
Speaker 6: Into It Dome our new stadium. No, seriously, it was
Speaker 6: like a product launch we weren't on in this case.
Speaker 6: We worked on the thing for nine years. I put blood,
Speaker 6: sweat and tears in it, every detail that product, and
Speaker 6: we launched it. Now get won every nine years, so
Speaker 6: well not now now, hopefully it's fifty years from now.
Speaker 6: So in a sense, yeah, it's fun. It is fun
Speaker 6: to say we've done this great thing.
Speaker 8: Please take a look at it, and we love it,
Speaker 8: and wow, look at how it does this, this and this,
Speaker 8: and you can be enthusiastic about it and it's fun
Speaker 8: to actually then take the next step to bring it
Speaker 8: to customers.
Speaker 6: And see what they really think, not just what they
Speaker 6: applaud when you launch it.
Speaker 1: Do you think do you think Tack's too serious?
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 6: I mean in there, I was like, man, I miss this,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't really have a feel for that.
Speaker 6: I think, you know, I always thought, Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 6: have fewer characters, you know, Bell Gates a character larger
Speaker 6: than life, or Larry Ellison a character larger than life.
Speaker 6: Steve Jobs obviously, and yet I think there's still some
Speaker 6: characters Sam altonon and other characters I eat, big, larger
Speaker 6: than life personalities. So, in a sense, is it too serious?
Speaker 6: I don't know that. I would say that the AI
Speaker 6: thing is tricky because if you don't seem serious enough,
Speaker 6: then people won't trust you with the privacy. You know,
Speaker 6: the issues that AI generates uniquely. So I see a
Speaker 6: little bit less of the hey, let's.
Speaker 3: Do the Yeah.
Speaker 6: The big joke or thing is it's just tougher with
Speaker 6: these kinds of products.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of characters, developers, developers, developers developers.
Speaker 1: But is AI going to make engineers obsolete?
Speaker 6: AI is going to vastly change the way software gets built.
Speaker 6: It will, and yet there's still going to be people
Speaker 6: who have to figure out what the world needs how
Speaker 6: to give it to them. They may do different skills,
Speaker 6: they may do things in different ways. But the notion
Speaker 6: that there are people who are generating great ideas, maybe
Speaker 6: great ideas that they get helped to generate by the
Speaker 6: AI itself, I think that's important. Now, will all of
Speaker 6: the code crunching activities of yesterday be around tomorrow? No,
Speaker 6: A lot of those will go away. But I'm an optimist.
Speaker 6: People say, oh, you know, are you going to put
Speaker 6: people out of and this happened every time. You know,
Speaker 6: Will this cause a loss of jobs? Will that costs
Speaker 6: a lot of jobs? You know what I'd say? Somehow,
Speaker 6: the world's always created new jobs. It can be hard
Speaker 6: the dislocation. People say, oh, shoot, it's my skills it
Speaker 6: became obsolete, But there will be new important skills people
Speaker 6: need with AI.
Speaker 2: How confident are you that Microsoft can make products that
Speaker 2: people really love and not just products that people need.
Speaker 6: You know that that has to do with a number
Speaker 6: of things, not the least of which is having talent
Speaker 6: that brings I'll call it the delight point of view.
Speaker 6: I think there needs to be a productivity.
Speaker 7: Point of view.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's important to get things done in the world,
Speaker 6: but there needs to be this sort of consumer delight thing.
Speaker 6: And you know, Sacha as we had to do. As
Speaker 6: Sacha has to do, you got to bring in the
Speaker 6: right kinds of talents. And Mustafa who's the CEO of
Speaker 6: the AI group, I think he's got that right kind
Speaker 6: of delight and personality if you will, to bring to
Speaker 6: the product. So yeah, I think it'll be a product
Speaker 6: that delights, not just helps you be productive.
Speaker 1: All right, there's a couple more questions, if you will.
Speaker 2: Microsoft caught so many technological waves. Sacha gives you credit
Speaker 2: for seeing the cloud, but the company missed.
Speaker 1: Mobile and social and search. Do you ever look back
Speaker 1: and think, what.
Speaker 6: If not too much? Actually did the company meet miss search? No,
Speaker 6: because all the stuff, including Sacha who worked on that stuff,
Speaker 6: all that stuff is now fundamental to what's going on
Speaker 6: in AI. So yes, there was a psychle of it.
Speaker 6: The company missed, and yet I'm super happy that the company.
Speaker 6: It enhances the company's position. The one I would would
Speaker 6: highlight is the intelligence that you carry with you, I e.
Speaker 7: Your phone.
Speaker 6: Now, well that change and will move to wearables. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I think probably that's true. That's the one I say.
Speaker 6: And I know why I we missed it missed, meaning
Speaker 6: we don't have a strong position and we have no
Speaker 6: position anymore. But I think that the company has really
Speaker 6: thrived despite that, and I'm proud of that. I'm proud
Speaker 6: of that. And you know, are there things that Sacha
Speaker 6: is missing right now? I'm sure you know, fifteen years
Speaker 6: from now, he'll look back and say I could have
Speaker 6: done that one sorry, oh shoot, could have done that
Speaker 6: one better.
Speaker 3: But he we'll bleep you out.
Speaker 1: Okay, last question.
Speaker 2: You're kind of like the heart of Microsoft. How does
Speaker 2: now come heard of the glory days? I mean, I
Speaker 2: see you jumping around on the basketball court and you're
Speaker 2: doing your philanthropy.
Speaker 1: Will anything really compare?
Speaker 6: Well? Yeah, I mean, look, I like to be excited.
Speaker 6: There was so much to be excited about at Microsoft.
Speaker 6: We're doing great things and you know, trying to really
Speaker 6: if you will be cheerleaders for a whole industry, and
Speaker 6: that was a lot of fun. Now I'm still cheerleader,
Speaker 6: I'm just cheerleading for a much smaller group of people.
Speaker 6: We're never going to have more than five guys playing
Speaker 6: at a time and probably fifteen people getting dressed. But
Speaker 6: you know, I love that. I love the energy, I
Speaker 6: love the complexity. You know, I'm very much not the
Speaker 6: person who's operating day to day, which I was here,
Speaker 6: and that that's kind of right for me at this
Speaker 6: phase of life. But you know, the intricacy thinking about
Speaker 6: things and then cheerleading. I still love that.
Speaker 2: I did see some footage of you jumping into Lake Bill,
Speaker 2: so I'm kind of wondering what we didn't see.
Speaker 6: Probably a ton.
Speaker 1: All right, Steve, that was awesome.
Speaker 6: Congratulations Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, Developers.
Speaker 2: On May nineteenth, Microsoft held the opening keynote for BUILD,
Speaker 2: its annual developers conference.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Build.
Speaker 2: To get an idea of what Microsoft was like when
Speaker 2: Sachiinadella took the helm, all you have to do is
Speaker 2: go back to the same keynote event from the year
Speaker 2: he became CEO in twenty.
Speaker 4: Fourteen, Windows Phone, Windows Phone and Windows Phones Windows Phone,
Speaker 4: Windows Phone eight.
Speaker 2: Point one, Windows Phone was mentioned over one hundred times.
Speaker 2: Just three years later, Zero sach An Adella successfully shed
Speaker 2: Microsoft of its fledgling consumer products and transform the company
Speaker 2: into a cloud infrastructure juggernaut with Azure. But this year
Speaker 2: there's a different product you'll here mentioned Endless.
Speaker 3: Cool Pilot, col Pilot, cool Pilot, co Pilot.
Speaker 2: Co Pilot, Microsoft's gateway to all things AI dominated this
Speaker 2: year's build keynote. It's clear where Microsoft is staking its future.
Speaker 2: I sat down with Nadella at Microsoft headquarters to discuss
Speaker 2: how he got started at the company and where he
Speaker 2: sees it going in the future. So good again, Thank
Speaker 2: you for doing this and thank you for coming up.
Speaker 2: It's been so fun going through fifty years of history.
Speaker 1: How does fifty feel to you?
Speaker 3: It feels young, be honest.
Speaker 1: Do you still get excited when you hear the Windows
Speaker 1: startups sound?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: I mean it's kind of like one of those it
Speaker 4: feels like, you know, without it, there is no day
Speaker 4: that you can start.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: Some of among my favorite clips, I found this one.
Speaker 2: This is a classic throwback video.
Speaker 3: Four being a data my daughter makes a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: What I'm going to do now is exit out of this.
Speaker 2: And so you're a technical product manager here you're demoing Excel.
Speaker 1: Who's that guy, Like, what's he thinking at that time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's sort of like, it's it's funny that you
Speaker 4: mentioned that, because it is an Excel demo with a
Speaker 4: I think a dB two connector back to at that
Speaker 4: time a mini computer and it was the beginning of
Speaker 4: that client Silver era and the this last weekend, for example,
Speaker 4: I was thinking, God, like, what can I build today?
Speaker 4: And thanks to this get Up Copilot age, you know,
Speaker 4: I went and built. In fact, you know, recreated what
Speaker 4: Bill had done with the Altair, which is the basic interpreter,
Speaker 4: except that he I guess he had to spend multiple
Speaker 4: nights to do that, and we were now we can
Speaker 4: do it thanks to Get Up Copilot in minutes and
Speaker 4: that excitement of being able to use technology to create
Speaker 4: more technology. I think it's what brought me to Microsoft,
Speaker 4: has got me to do what I was doing at Microsoft,
Speaker 4: and is sort of what keeps me at Microsoft. I
Speaker 4: think that's sort of uniquely a very microsoft Y thing
Speaker 4: to do, which is it's not just.
Speaker 3: That tech we build.
Speaker 4: It's how the tech we build allows others to build
Speaker 4: more tech.
Speaker 3: That's I think who we are at our core DNA.
Speaker 1: Did that guy have any idea he'd be running the
Speaker 1: place a chance?
Speaker 4: I was like hoping to stay there in my job
Speaker 4: for the next month if I could, I was lucky
Speaker 4: enough to get hired. It was you know, you know,
Speaker 4: there was no you know, there was no notion that
Speaker 4: you know, I'll ever get to anything other than enjoy
Speaker 4: the job. But that's probably the thing that I never
Speaker 4: felt any job I was doing at Microsoft somehow was
Speaker 4: a path to the next job. The job I was
Speaker 4: doing was like the most exciting thing that I could
Speaker 4: be doing, and I gave it at all, and the
Speaker 4: rest is history.
Speaker 2: You are credited with leading Microsoft's comeback, and you came
Speaker 2: in as kind of a wartime CEO.
Speaker 1: Is it peacetime now or is it still war?
Speaker 4: I mean those metaphors are interesting to me. I feel
Speaker 4: like the Microsoft I grew up in was that there
Speaker 4: was no such thing as oh wow, we want anything.
Speaker 4: All through the errors from ninety two on, we felt like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, the entire platform is shifting underneath us.
Speaker 4: We better do something otherwise. We were going to disappear,
Speaker 4: right the web. I mean I would say maybe for
Speaker 4: a brief moment in client server we felt like, ohow,
Speaker 4: we got it, and then the web happened, and then
Speaker 4: we had to adjust to the web, and then mobile
Speaker 4: and cloud happened, and now of course AI is happening.
Speaker 4: And so at least the core DNA and the core
Speaker 4: posture I've had throughout my thirty two years at Microsoft
Speaker 4: is we better, we better get our act together to
Speaker 4: make sure we're learning fast enough about what the next
Speaker 4: big thing is and then really be doing relevant things
Speaker 4: in it. So I would say, so I hate the wartime,
Speaker 4: peace time, but it's all about hey, are we being
Speaker 4: relevant in the future. The only way to survive, I
Speaker 4: think in tech industry, which is pretty harsh, there is
Speaker 4: no such thing as franchise value, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 4: the hard part of it, and so you got to
Speaker 4: give it you hope you succeed, and you got to
Speaker 4: take lots of shots on goald.
Speaker 1: Do you got to stay paranoid?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of that. That's one way to think
Speaker 4: about it, or stay excited. Maybe that's another way, Like
Speaker 4: paranoia is one motivation, the other one is to say, wow,
Speaker 4: what got you in here? Forget the success for a second,
Speaker 4: and then more importantly, just have the curiosity and stay
Speaker 4: optimistic about the future.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's the way to do it.
Speaker 2: You obviously have a booming enterprise business when you look
Speaker 2: at what Google is doing in Apple and Meta and Amazon,
Speaker 2: how important is it to you to win in consumer
Speaker 2: AI and how do you do that?
Speaker 3: That's a great question.
Speaker 4: So to me, the Microsoft again that I've grown up with,
Speaker 4: we never actually thought of consumer and enterprise is two
Speaker 4: distinct things.
Speaker 3: We sort of thought of the category.
Speaker 4: Knowledge work or productivity, right, Like you know, we build
Speaker 4: tools that spanned consumer and enterprise. It's just that the
Speaker 4: consumer market has expanded a lot, or consumer tech market
Speaker 4: has expanded in many categories, and that's fantastic. But to me,
Speaker 4: I want us to play to our strength. Like if
Speaker 4: I look at even what we're doing with co pilot, right,
Speaker 4: how do we build a cop pilot that is the
Speaker 4: new browser effectively in this intelligence era that has a
Speaker 4: unique characteristic of.
Speaker 3: That is Microsoft.
Speaker 4: Right, whether it's you know, hey helping you with your
Speaker 4: travel planning or whether it's shopping or with your homework.
Speaker 4: But do it in a way that it uniquely telegraphs
Speaker 4: what I think Microsoft's signature would be in it, in
Speaker 4: what is going to be a new way to litigate
Speaker 4: what is the consumer market?
Speaker 2: As we saw with search in your competition with Google,
Speaker 2: sometimes you just can't fight the verb. It's habit forming
Speaker 2: and chat GBT is the verb right now. So how
Speaker 2: much do you worry that Microsoft loses the mind share game?
Speaker 4: First thing, I'm very thrilled about Chad Jepet's success. You know,
Speaker 4: as partners, as investors, as you know, we every day
Speaker 4: the chat jept succeeds is a fantastic day for micro.
Speaker 2: Right every day you should every time you search on
Speaker 2: chat gpt, Microsoft makes money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's by the way, powered by being and
Speaker 4: so so to me, it's fantastic to see chat jepet success,
Speaker 4: and in some sense it really improves the point that
Speaker 4: you know, markets can evolve and new hit products can
Speaker 4: be created from anywhere and what have you. And so
Speaker 4: that is what gives us even the unique opportunity with
Speaker 4: co pilot right, which is essentially to say in a
Speaker 4: world where a new category is being born, which is
Speaker 4: these new agents, these agents will have memory, will have personalization, Essentially,
Speaker 4: you can even think of it as the beginning of
Speaker 4: a new browser category. And there are lots of people
Speaker 4: who are going to enter the browser categories. We all
Speaker 4: have unique strengths and angles of differentiation and distribution even
Speaker 4: and so time will tell. But I must say I'm
Speaker 4: thrilled that chat, GPT and Copilot are some of the
Speaker 4: leading products out there well.
Speaker 2: And Microsoft is building its own models. Open ai is
Speaker 2: making other friends. And your partnership ends in twenty thirty
Speaker 2: Are you trying to tell the kids that maybe this
Speaker 2: marriage isn't forever?
Speaker 4: See again, this is another thing I've learned in the
Speaker 4: last fifty years is you know, you approach all partnerships
Speaker 4: and create long term, stable partnerships which are win win, right.
Speaker 4: You know, we for decades are partnered with Intel. For
Speaker 4: a decade, we're partnered with SAP. That's at least the
Speaker 4: Microsoft I've grown up in. So I hope that for
Speaker 4: decades to come, Microsoft and open Ai will be partnered.
Speaker 3: In a variety of different ways.
Speaker 4: Will they have other partners absolutely, Will we have other
Speaker 4: partners absolutely? And so therefore I think we overstate all
Speaker 4: of these things as zero sum.
Speaker 3: They don't necessarily need to be.
Speaker 4: Microsoft wouldn't be here fifty years in as successful as
Speaker 4: we are if we had not learned and how to
Speaker 4: partner well in these long term stable constructs.
Speaker 2: But the relationship is changing, right, Like, how is it
Speaker 2: changing and what happens when that deal is.
Speaker 4: I think any company that has gone from being a
Speaker 4: research lab to one of the most successful product companies
Speaker 4: of this age, obviously things have to change for them
Speaker 4: and for us, and in the context of the partnership, right,
Speaker 4: So therefore I look at it. We're investors in open
Speaker 4: AI and we're thrilled about that. We are we have
Speaker 4: IP rights, We're thrilled about that access.
Speaker 3: We are infrastructure providers.
Speaker 4: They are the biggest customers of ours, and so to us,
Speaker 4: having that multifaceted sort of partnership is what we are
Speaker 4: really focused on. And I do think in their lives
Speaker 4: the long term stability of it, right, which is every
Speaker 4: day they're doing well, we're doing well, and if you're
Speaker 4: doing well, they're doing well. So why would any one
Speaker 4: of us want to go upset.
Speaker 2: That so many companies are doing more with less. I've
Speaker 2: heard some tech companies are thinking, maybe we won't need
Speaker 2: to hire you and your engineers. If AI can do
Speaker 2: their jobs, you employ more than two hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Is it half that in the future.
Speaker 4: I think it's kind of interesting. So I think what
Speaker 4: we have to do is separate out that's broadly the
Speaker 4: knowledge work we do today and the knowledge worker. If
Speaker 4: you sort of say, well, there are two different things.
Speaker 4: Knowledge work will have a different level of abstraction and
Speaker 4: you will be able to then get more done.
Speaker 3: That means the company can be more productive.
Speaker 4: So to me, like, I'll give you an example of
Speaker 4: what we've done in terms of a structural change in LinkedIn.
Speaker 4: We have front end engineers, we have designers, we have
Speaker 4: product managers. So what you know the LinkedIn team has
Speaker 4: done is taken all of them and said they're full
Speaker 4: stack builders now. And so in some sense, what it's
Speaker 4: created is more capacity for that team to be able
Speaker 4: to conceive and you know, and deliver more products for
Speaker 4: more customers than ever before. So I think I look
Speaker 4: at the iteam like one of the things about software engineering, right,
Speaker 4: you know, get Up I think is on course to
Speaker 4: maybe a couple of hundred million users and on course
Speaker 4: to a billion user dream. And so you say, well,
Speaker 4: does the world need a billion software developers. Absolutely. I
Speaker 4: look at the IT backlogs everywhere and all the apps
Speaker 4: that need to be built, and so I think think,
Speaker 4: thanks to get up copilot first, more people can get in,
Speaker 4: more people can complete task how you build the applications.
Speaker 4: So this abundance will drive actually the you know, will
Speaker 4: fulfill the demand that is not being fulfilled today.
Speaker 2: The emergence of deep Seek from China, you told your
Speaker 2: team to quickly integrate it into Azure. Open ai is
Speaker 2: saying it should be banned, it's stay controlled. Why don't
Speaker 2: you think it's a risk, and what do you think
Speaker 2: of China's role in this fight?
Speaker 4: I think, first of all, there are two very different things, right.
Speaker 4: One is there's the model and then there is the application,
Speaker 4: and I think that both have to be part separately
Speaker 4: for different you know, and people should opine and states
Speaker 4: should take action based on what they see.
Speaker 3: There is the The thing that I.
Speaker 4: Think about is they will always be leading closed source model.
Speaker 4: Open ai is one such example. They've done fantastic work.
Speaker 4: Obviously we're excited about sort of how they continue to
Speaker 4: quite frankly set the standard right because even deep Seek's
Speaker 4: innovation is mostly a catch up to what open ai
Speaker 4: had already delivered with one and three, and so I
Speaker 4: think that's kind of one side of it. The other
Speaker 4: side of it is there will always be open source,
Speaker 4: and if anything, what deep Seak has proven is open
Speaker 4: source can come from any place. In this case, it
Speaker 4: happens to come from China. The next model may come
Speaker 4: from some other country, it may come from the lab
Speaker 4: in the United States, it doesn't matter. But the rate
Speaker 4: of diffusion of this technology is such that in this
Speaker 4: industry we better sort of really face up to the
Speaker 4: fact that this is the rate of diffusion that's faster
Speaker 4: than anything before, and it's worldwide.
Speaker 3: And the last big algorithmic.
Speaker 4: Breakthrough or systems bake through or tech breakthrough has not
Speaker 4: happened yet.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: Because we're in this new computing era, tech giants including you,
Speaker 2: are spending trillions of dollars on building these AI data centers.
Speaker 1: Do you have any.
Speaker 2: Concerns about the size and scale of this bet like,
Speaker 2: are we building the future the right way?
Speaker 4: I think the scale is pretty stunning, right in the
Speaker 4: sense of I thought I joined a software company and
Speaker 4: here we are talking about tens, if not hundreds of
Speaker 4: billions or dollars of Capex.
Speaker 3: So what happened?
Speaker 4: I think the interesting thing, in an interesting way is
Speaker 4: we've used capex to amplify the effects of software and
Speaker 4: make it ubiquitous. That's kind of really it, right, which
Speaker 4: is when you think about tokens, which is a way
Speaker 4: to deliver intelligence per dollarp a.
Speaker 3: What that's the equation I obsess about.
Speaker 4: Our ability to generate that abundance of tokens has increased tremendously,
Speaker 4: and that's the supply side of it. And that's what
Speaker 4: a lot of people talk about, whether it is on
Speaker 4: the chip side, or on the data center side, or.
Speaker 3: On the power side. But the real test here, Emily,
Speaker 3: is what happens in the real economy. Right end of
Speaker 3: the day.
Speaker 4: It will be very evident to us, what is the
Speaker 4: GDP growth rate? You know, in the developed world or
Speaker 4: in the global South. Are we growing faster because of
Speaker 4: this new input we have called intelligence, which is abundant.
Speaker 4: Because when you have a new input whose prices effectively
Speaker 4: are falling by half every three months, six months, that's crazy, right,
Speaker 4: I mean this is so then you have to then
Speaker 4: translate that into health outcomes, education outcomes, small business productivity,
Speaker 4: public sector efficiency, large multinational competitiveness anywhere in the world,
Speaker 4: and that then parlays itself into GDP growth. So to me,
Speaker 4: the real test is not some benchmark or what have
Speaker 4: you a AI, it's one simple fact, which is when
Speaker 4: we start seeing higher growth rates around the world, and
Speaker 4: the benefits of that growth rate, by the way being
Speaker 4: much more broader cross sectorally and by economic strata, then
Speaker 4: I think you'd have achieved something.
Speaker 2: You've said, you won't be successful unless you're successor is successful.
Speaker 1: What is Microsoft in fifty years?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm mostly focused on what is Microsoft on
Speaker 4: the fifty first year? But I think you bring up
Speaker 4: a great point to me, and I think in any
Speaker 4: institution that succeeds, for a leader to have people who
Speaker 4: come after them who are most successful means that's probably
Speaker 4: the best testament to institutional strength that you may have
Speaker 4: built right, culturally, technologically, whatever it takes. But to me,
Speaker 4: that's I think a great way to measure even right.
Speaker 4: It's not like, you know, I'm always suspect when somebody
Speaker 4: comes in and says I'm the savior because everything before
Speaker 4: me was bad and I'm going to save it.
Speaker 3: First of all, I never believe that it's the case.
Speaker 4: And also I think, if I've done anything right, hopefully
Speaker 4: the next CEO and the CEO after them can do
Speaker 4: even better than what Microsoft has achieved.
Speaker 2: In the first fifty Microsoft changed the world? Will Microsoft
Speaker 2: change the world again?
Speaker 4: To me, that's you know what is exciting about Microsoft,
Speaker 4: And in the coredina of this company, I go back
Speaker 4: to that, you know, that founding moment. And I don't
Speaker 4: know what the thought was really right when Bill said,
Speaker 4: you know what, the software industry didn't exist, right, remember,
Speaker 4: I mean, so he kind of and he and Paul
Speaker 4: sort of said, oh, we should build software and hopefully
Speaker 4: we can monetize it and they will be an industry.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they will come.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it all happened, and so that and but
Speaker 4: the the other thing about it, though, was that that
Speaker 4: core of what we want to build software so that
Speaker 4: others can create more software. That ability to think of
Speaker 4: us as an input to somebody else's output, whether it's
Speaker 4: knowledge work, whether it's software development, you pick your field.
Speaker 4: That I think is what is gives us relevance. And
Speaker 4: I always say this, longevity is not a goal. Relevance
Speaker 4: is and The framing of this company from nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: five to twenty twenty five has been the same, which is,
Speaker 4: can you do things that allow others to do more things.
Speaker 4: That's a beautiful way to frame it because then you
Speaker 4: know that'll be true always.
Speaker 2: If you could time travel to twenty seventy five, what
Speaker 2: advice would you give your.
Speaker 4: Successor I mean, the advice I got from Steve Bama
Speaker 4: when I took on the job is the advice that
Speaker 4: I think of all the time, which is be bold
Speaker 4: because if you're not bold, you're not going to do anything.
Speaker 4: And be right because if you're not right, you won't
Speaker 4: amount too much. And so that ability to sort of
Speaker 4: get past the statusco by really boldly thinking of a
Speaker 4: future that doesn't exist, but then executing right at the
Speaker 4: end of the day. Business is about being able to
Speaker 4: earn the stripes one step at a time. And I
Speaker 4: think that's what this company has exhibited, what it has
Speaker 4: taught me all through my career at Microsoft, which is
Speaker 4: you got.
Speaker 3: A dream and execute, Dream and execute, and that you.
Speaker 4: Know we're not gotten it always right, both either on
Speaker 4: the dream side or on the execution side, but on
Speaker 4: the batting average it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: You've talked about diversity and inclusion as a bedrock of
Speaker 2: company culture.
Speaker 1: You didn't go to the inauguration.
Speaker 2: How important is diversity and inclusion still to you as
Speaker 2: you build the next fifty Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: Just true for us.
Speaker 4: When I think about our mission of empowering every person
Speaker 4: in every organization around the world to achieve more, you
Speaker 4: have to then take the prosecution of that mission as
Speaker 4: the most important thing. And to prosecute that mission, you
Speaker 4: need to make sure you have people who represent that
Speaker 4: world in the company. It's not like we're doing I
Speaker 4: never thought of what we thought of diversity and inclusion
Speaker 4: is somehow separate from running our business.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: I always think about the social purpose of a corporation
Speaker 4: is to create profitable solutions to the challenges of people
Speaker 4: in planet. And that's you know, an Oxford economist said
Speaker 4: that not me, and I like that definition, and to me,
Speaker 4: the keywords are being both profit and solutions to challenges
Speaker 4: of people in planet. So I think our mission is
Speaker 4: aligned with that social purpose, and in order to prosecute
Speaker 4: our mission, we just need to make sure that we
Speaker 4: have the people and the talent and the merit that
Speaker 4: all that talent represents and so we'll always have that approach.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're going to do a quick rapid fire
Speaker 2: and now I'm looking for like one to three word answers. Okay,
Speaker 2: Microsoft's biggest hit.
Speaker 4: You know, Windows biggest miss, Clippy. It's just ahead of
Speaker 4: its time. It is just ahead of its time. It's
Speaker 4: back again.
Speaker 3: Biggest surprise, The biggest surprise.
Speaker 4: Was maybe maybe this open AI chat GPT right in
Speaker 4: my career and I look at it like when we
Speaker 4: launched it. Now, maybe maybe that's what was it, right,
Speaker 4: which is wow, that talking I mean like having a
Speaker 4: chat interface become a hit was a real surprise.
Speaker 1: A CEO, you'd love to trade jobs with.
Speaker 4: A CEO that I would trade with maybe the you
Speaker 4: know the.
Speaker 3: Maybe the CEO of Fred Hutch.
Speaker 2: Biggest future bet AI or Quantum.
Speaker 4: Both in fact, In fact, I think of AI as
Speaker 4: the emulator for what is the simulator of nature? Right,
Speaker 4: So in some sense, Quantum's dream is to be the
Speaker 4: simulator of the nature, and AI helps us actually be
Speaker 4: the emulator for it.
Speaker 1: The hardest lesson you've learned as CEO.
Speaker 4: I think the hardest one is to be able to
Speaker 4: really live that, right, the deliver the present and then
Speaker 4: prepare for the future. That ability, Like, as a CEO,
Speaker 4: what is it that you have to do each quarter?
Speaker 3: You have to create magic?
Speaker 4: Right, that's kind of what every ninety days the market
Speaker 4: expects you to create magic, and that's kind of the
Speaker 4: reality of the world we live in while at the
Speaker 4: same time building.
Speaker 3: A long term institution.
Speaker 4: And so I think that that's I think, and the
Speaker 4: accountability that goes with it, even you know, I must say,
Speaker 4: even one step removed and not understood it as well
Speaker 4: as the last eleven years of being able to sort
Speaker 4: of understand what it takes to have that ultimate accountability
Speaker 4: to both deliver today and for tomorrow and to be
Speaker 4: able to get that balance right.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's to tomorrow in the next fifty years.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, as Satya, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to watch our deep dive into Microsoft
Speaker 2: on their fiftieth anniversary, check out the circuit on Bloomberg
Speaker 2: TV or the Bloomberg Originals channel on YouTube. You'll hear
Speaker 2: from all three CEOs, as well as Microsoft Vice chair
Speaker 2: and President Brad Smith and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suliman.
Speaker 2: It's a big episode full of lots of great stuff,
Speaker 2: so definitely go watch it. This has been the Circuit podcast.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to hear more extended interviews like this,
Speaker 2: please rate and review our show on Apple Podcasts or
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Speaker 2: is Lauren Ellis, our writer and editor is Billy Disney,
Speaker 2: and I'm Emily Chang, your host and executive producer.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.