Microsoft has never been so valuable throughout its history. And he has never been so close to the abyss

The first computer of Satya NadellaCEO of Microsoft, was a VAX manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (Dec) in the late 1970s. That machine excited him in such a way that Nadella was clear about her future: she wanted to devote himself to computer science. More than that: I wanted to devote yourself to computer science and work for DEC.

That could not be. The concept of microordoring the company was based on its own architecture, called Virtual Address Extension (hence Vax), but that technology ended up being crushed by which it would succeed at that time: the RISC architecture. The company tried to survive, but ended up being acquired in 1998 by Compaq and, a few years later, disappearing.

The lesson that Nadella learned with Dec

By the time the debacle started, Nadella had moved. After a brief period in Sun Microsystems, he began working in Microsoft in 1992 and was climbing positions until it ended becoming the company’s CEO in 2014.

The funny thing is that now That past with Dec pursues him. This was recently confirmed at a meeting with Microsoft employees in which it confessed something important:

“Our sector is full of practical cases of companies that were in their day and that simply disappeared. There is one in particular that persecutes me, called Dec.”

In fact, he explained how “some of the people who contributed to Windows NT came from a DEC laboratory that was closed.” The Microsoft CEO thus answered an employee’s question about the moral situation in the company, which according to indicate in The Verge It is in historical minimums. Not in vain Microsoft has just suffered a massive round of layoffs with 9,000 affected employees.

The curious thing, Nadella admitted, is that after 51 years in the market some metrics indicate that Microsoft is at its best. This shows Its stock market capitalization is around four billion dollars and places the Redmond company like the second or third —Intercambia positions with Apple, Nvidia remains unstoppable – company of the world in relevance. “But at the same time, when I think of the degree of difficulty that awaits us, to be able to navigate a changing industry, a changing technological sector and a changing economy, we have a very hard job ahead.”

And they certainly have it.

What happens if the software doesn’t matter when you are the largest company in the software world

The main external threat for Microsoft is not that IA improves existing software products. It is to make them irrelevant.

Nadella himself admitted it to saying at that meeting with employees that “all the categories we could have loved for 40 years may not matter.” Days later he talked about all this in a post on the official Microsoft blog. He titled it “Recomproming us with our why, ours what and ours“. The implications of paradigm shift are colossal for world software giant:

• Office and Windows: Traditionally its great sources of income, the productivity suite and its operating system can end up having no place in our world. If an AI agent can end up managing all office tasks, creating documents, analyzing data and coordinating the work without the need for the Office suite or even a traditional operating system interface, the base of the Microsoft business would be eroded. We would no longer use an application to do the job. We would say to an AI to do it, how is it starting to happen.
• Competitors without ties: The new AI companies are not weighed by the legacy of an office suite or a 40 -year -old operating system. These startups can design lighter, fast and totally native solutions in the AI ​​era. For Nadella it makes no sense “to be in love with what we create in the past.”

The situation for Microsoft is certainly disturbing. Despite its multimillionaire investment in OpenAi, The relationship has evolved To turn both companies into uncomfortable allies that are sought their own B plans Like softbank, Nvidia or Oracle.

For Microsoft, things have not gone so well: it has injected billions to end depending on the technology of another company that is also becoming direct competitor. He has bazas in his favor as his gigantic Azure infrastructure, but not even that ensures survival.

The Microsoft’s pressure to reinvent itself It is huge. He already achieved it after the failure in the segments of Internet search engines, social networks or finally mobile phones, but now the black clouds appear again with the AI ​​boom.

The funny thing is that Microsoft was the Big Tech that adopted the AI ​​paradigm shift with the necessary intensity. His bet – especially, by OpenAi – was extraordinary, but for them the threat is not that of a company that ignores the change, but that of one that perhaps made the wrong bets. At the moment it does not have a competitive foundational model, and that co -driver overload has not just set in the market. What will Nadella and your company do to react?

You move, Microsoft.

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