Who Owns Microsoft?

Microsoft has no owner. Microsoft Corporation is listed on NASDAQ with no controlling shareholder and no parent. The largest holders are index managers — Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street — holding on behalf of the investors in their funds. Bill Gates no longer controls Microsoft and has not for many years; he left the board in 2020 and holds a small fraction of what he once did. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Microsoft today?

Microsoft Corporation is a public company. Ownership sits with its shareholders and changes daily, and no single party is anywhere near control.

Microsoft has a single class of common stock, so votes track shares exactly. There is no dual-class structure preserving founder control, which is what distinguishes it from Meta, Alphabet and Snap — and it is why the founder’s departure genuinely ended his control rather than merely his job.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

Microsoft Corporation is the ultimate parent, with no group above it. Operating subsidiaries sit beneath it by market and function, including the UK entities employing staff here.

Its acquisitions are held as subsidiaries: LinkedIn, GitHub, Mojang and Activision Blizzard among them. Each is owned by Microsoft rather than being an independent company, though several continue to trade under their own names.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

The largest holders are the index managers — Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street — each holding a mid-single-digit to high-single-digit percentage. As on this site’s other listed profiles, those shares sit inside funds and belong to the funds’ investors, not to the managers.

Individual holdings are small. Bill Gates held roughly half the company at its 1986 flotation and has sold and given away the great majority since, largely to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He stepped down as chief executive in 2000, as chairman in 2014, and left the board entirely in 2020. Steve Ballmer, the former chief executive, is generally reported as the largest individual shareholder — ahead of Gates — and even so holds a small percentage of a very large company.

No holder approaches the 25% that would register as significant control under UK rules, and none can appoint the board alone.

Official records and evidence

No UK register records Microsoft’s ownership. Microsoft Corporation is US-listed and discloses through SEC filings — the annual proxy statement for directors’ and officers’ holdings, and Schedule 13G filings for institutions crossing 5%.

Any percentage quoted anywhere is a snapshot from a filing date. Index positions drift with fund flows, and both Gates’ and Ballmer’s holdings have changed materially over time, so figures without dates are of little use.

Ownership history and changes

Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and floated in March 1986. Allen left in 1983 and sold down over subsequent decades; he died in 2018.

Gates’ reduction from majority owner to minor holder happened gradually through sales and philanthropic transfers rather than in any single event. Microsoft has never been acquired and has had no change of control in forty years as a public company.

Its most significant recent ownership activity has been outward: Microsoft is the largest external shareholder in OpenAI at roughly 27% — a stake that, as this site’s OpenAI profile sets out, carries no control.

Related companies and brands

Microsoft owns Windows, Office, Azure, Xbox, LinkedIn, GitHub, Mojang (Minecraft) and Activision Blizzard, along with Skype and Nuance.

Those are subsidiaries and product lines of one company. Its stake in OpenAI is different in kind — a minority shareholding in a separate company that Microsoft does not control, and one of the clearest cases on this site of a large investment being mistaken for ownership.