Bill Gates says Microsoft's $3 trillion success is a blend of — youthful late-night coding escapades, a premature Harvard departure, and a sprinkle of "laissez-faire treatment" from passers-by

Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivers a keynote speech on the closing day of the Global Solutions Summit in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.

Microsoft is arguably the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of over $3 trillion. Its products and services have been broadly adopted worldwide and are essential to the success of most organizations.

Last year's CrowdStrike global IT outage caused by a faulty rapid response content update crippled operations across a wide range of business after leaving approximately 8.5 million Windows devices with dreadful a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) error.