‘Microsoft is back.’ How AI put the five-decade-old tech giant on top again.

Employees were leaving the company in droves to go work at competitors, and Microsoft had trouble recruiting from colleges.

“Are we at risk of becoming irrelevant?” was the question hanging over the company, said Sivaramakrishnan Somasegar, an investor at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, who at the time was a senior Microsoft executive.

How times have changed.

On Tuesday, Microsoft reported its fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue, booking $62 billion in sales, and just last week its market capitalization — the total value of all of its shares put together — surpassed $3 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world.

Read More (...)