Silicon Valley is a famously difficult environment for incumbents. Today’s unstoppable juggernaut can quickly become tomorrow’s has-been. Just ask Xerox, Intel, or Yahoo. So it says a lot that Microsoft is still on top as the world’s second-largest company by market cap, fifty years after its founding and more than thirty years after becoming the juggernaut of American software. The company has thrived through both good and bad periods for tech and under both Republican and Democrat presidencies. The company pairs technical talent with real political savvy, and that savvy has been on full display with the arrival of the second Trump administration.
Microsoft donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Five days before his swearing in, CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith dined in person with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. OpenAI, which Microsoft owns 49% of, took the starring role at a White House ceremony announcing the new initiative Stargate, a bid to invest $500 billion into creating an AI supercomputer. And on Monday, President Trump revealed that Microsoft is in talks to purchase Chinese-owned TikTok so that it can evade a potential ban.
