During the first week of this year, Microsoft quietly announced it was redesigning its startup investment strategy—again.
The corporate tech giant has gone through several iterations in its approach to founders already, all the way back to its foray into venture investing during the Dot Com boom and bust, when it was among the biggest corporate losers in the private markets, reporting billions of dollars in investment losses on its balance sheet. Nearly seven years ago, Microsoft made another big bet on startups, setting up its own independent fund called M12, scaling it to a team of currently 30 people and backing a host of software and A.I.-type startups from banking startup BlueVine to generative A.I. app Typeface.
