Bill Gates, Part 2: Microsoft at 50, and the next big opportunities for AI and innovation
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For this latest installment in our Microsoft @ 50 series, we talk with Bill Gates about the company's 50th anniversary, parallels between AI and the early days of the PC, and where he sees the next big opportunities for innovation.
This is part of a wide-ranging interview coinciding with the release of his new book, Source Code: My Beginnings. We published Part 1 of the interview last week, focusing on his upbringing in Seattle, the influential people in his life, the early days of the company, and his perspective on events now unfolding in the world.
Microsoft @ 50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture. Learn more and register here for our special Microsoft @ 50 event, March 20, 2025, in Seattle.
More in GeekWire’s Microsoft @ 50 series
- AI Dreams: Microsoft @ 50, Chapter 1
- Microsoft’s startup story: How the company became a tech giant, and what we can learn from it today
- A new era for Windows: Can Microsoft’s longtime engine power another tech revolution?
- ‘The Road Ahead’ at 30: What Bill Gates’ classic book about the future says about the world today
- Microsoft alums were surprised by the sheer scale of its success, new oral history project shows
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Back in 2008, during an interview at Microsoft headquarters, shortly before leaving his full-time role at the company, |
| 0:07.7 | Bill Gates dismissed the question of whether he might someday feel compelled to return to run Microsoft again. |
| 0:14.6 | Can you imagine any circumstance under which you would feel compelled to return to Microsoft full-time? |
| 0:19.4 | No. |
| 0:21.6 | But in a recent interview, nearly 17 years later, Gates acknowledged that he did actually |
| 0:27.1 | grapple with this concern at times in his Microsoft career, when he contemplated what it would |
| 0:32.4 | be like after eventually stepping down. |
| 0:34.9 | I always thought, oh, God, I'm going to leave, and the company's going to get screwed up, |
| 0:38.9 | and I'm not going to know what to do. Do I go back? Do I not go back? Oh, this is going to be torturous. |
| 0:45.6 | Fortunately, for him and for the company, he has not needed to deal with that dilemma. |
| 0:49.9 | The fact that, you know, along with many other companies, it's doing incredibly well is a great thrill for me. |
| 0:56.4 | As planned when Bill Gates left his full-time role, he still contributes as a part-time advisor to the company. |
| 1:01.8 | He meets regularly with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft's technical and product teams. |
| 1:08.6 | And in that capacity, he takes the long view, describing the rise of artificial intelligence |
| 1:14.2 | today as the continuation and repetition of a pattern that he recognized in the early |
| 1:20.0 | days of the personal computer. |
| 1:21.9 | Computing was becoming free. |
| 1:23.8 | And because it was free, could we use it for word processing or |
| 1:28.8 | our spreadsheets or email or things like that? You know, we were |
| 1:32.8 | evangelizing this as this incredible tool and then connecting them |
| 1:36.7 | together. Now, intelligence is becoming free. And that's even more |
| 1:43.3 | profound than computing becoming free. And that's even more profound than computing becoming free. |
... |
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