Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the company's 50th, and what's next
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we talk with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the company's 50th anniversary, and where it's headed from here.
Plus, highlights from Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event in Redmond, which featured a rare joint appearance by Nadella with former leaders Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
The day also reflected Microsoft's role in an increasingly complex global landscape, with a CNBC interview focusing in part on the impact of tariffs on the company and the global economy, and a protest outside the event condemning the use of the company’s technologies to support Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza.
Related coverage:
- Inside Microsoft’s 50th: Iconic moments, strong memories, and the realities of the outside world
- Gates, Ballmer, Nadella and Copilot: Microsoft CEOs past and present engage in podcast chat with AI
- Inside the Microsoft Archives: How the tech giant preserves, shares, and learns from its history
Microsoft@50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture.
More in GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 series
- AI Dreams: Microsoft@50, Chapter 1
- Microsoft President Brad Smith on AI, global turmoil, and key issues facing the tech giant at 50
- 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
- Bill Gates on Microsoft at 50, and what’s next for AI and innovation
More: Microsoft@50
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This Geekwire podcast is brought to you by BECU. Stay tuned to the break as Brian Westbrook |
| 0:06.0 | interviews BECU's Stacey Black for today's money hack about strategies for financial planning |
| 0:12.3 | when your income is irregular. For more money hacks, check out geekwire.com slash BECU. |
| 0:19.6 | Microsoft marked its 50th anniversary at an event in Redmond on Friday, and it was full of memorable moments as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined his predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Balmer at the event. |
| 0:32.6 | A very big thank you to the two of you and to Paul. |
| 0:37.8 | Thank you for your vision, your leadership, your passion, and for building the Microsoft that we know today, a company that has truly changed the world. |
| 0:47.3 | The event also reflected the realities of the world today as the trio faced questions in a CNBC interview about tariffs from |
| 0:55.7 | the Trump administration that are impacting the U.S. economy and the world. |
| 0:59.3 | I'm curious what all three of you think of this and what you've been thinking over the |
| 1:04.2 | last 48 hours. |
| 1:06.0 | As an American company, as a multinational company, I feel that, you know, we have to earn the license to operate |
| 1:12.6 | in every country, one country at a time, right? Every country is going to do what is right for |
| 1:17.7 | themselves, starting with the United States. The internal Microsoft anniversary event, like |
| 1:22.7 | Geekwire's Public Microsoft at 50 event two weeks earlier, was interrupted by protesters condemning the use of the company's technologies to support Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza. |
| 1:33.3 | In Israel, military, 50,000 people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region. |
| 1:39.3 | Thank you for your protest, I hear you. |
| 1:41.3 | For me, as someone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s at the dawn of the PC revolution, |
| 1:48.0 | one moment that resonated from the event was when Mustafa Soleiman, Microsoft's CEO of AI, |
| 1:55.0 | talked about his own early experiences with Microsoft products. |
| 1:58.0 | And you know, Microsoft has been a huge part of my own life too. |
| 2:02.2 | I remember being just 11 years old and opening a bright blue cardboard box. |
| 2:09.9 | Inside was a Windows OS CD-ROM. |
... |
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