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We're here with former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. Steve, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. We're here for Microsoft's 50th anniversary celebration. I guess the first things first, what is it about Microsoft that allows a company like it to last 50 years?

Yeah, I think there were a few key things, and the company keeps doing them, and that's great. Number one, innovation. You have to innovate. Number two, you got to serve your customers well. Number three, you've got to compete. You have to compete. And number four, you really have to have the people and the talent and the culture to persist. You have to have a long-term approach. That's part of the culture. You got to say, "We're going to be here. We're willing to invest to be here." And starting with Bill, through me, and now under Satya Nadella's leadership, the company is making the right moves with the right culture.

Well, speaking about under you, you helped Microsoft get into the cloud, and now it's a cloud juggernaut. What do you see going forward in that area? And how does AI assist with that?

Yeah, I would say two things. Number one, and, you know, computing is, and data are only going to get more important. And so the fundamental kind of engine that we built that had its antecedents, you know, in the PC, in the server, and then it got taken to a place where it really could be expanded because you didn't have to do all this micro crafting of server setup to the cloud. Unbelievable! And that, even without AI, that would have been just going through the roof. AI is interesting to me because it's the first quote new thing, really, since I've been involved with computing, or sorry, since, yeah, since I bought, since the microprocessor and software. People say, "Well, what about the Internet?" No, it was an extension of what was going on, if you will, with networks. "What about the cloud?" That's moving things back out to a place where they're more accessible. AI? There's no historical antecedent. I can't point to something and say, "Ah, you can trace that through to AI." Anything else, all I have, if I don't know what it is these days, I'll just say, "What's it like from the past?" Okay, check. There's nothing like AI. And so, will AI help the rest? Yes, but is AI really a whole new thing? Yes.

I got to ask, uh, you know, we obviously have a lot of news around tariffs going on right now. What, in your position, say you are still CEO, what does that mean for a company like Microsoft?

Well, I may not answer the question exactly the way you'd want because I'm not still CEO. Sure. Sure. It means I don't have my I mean, Satya is in a place where he has his hands on what's really going on. What are these governments thinking? What's really going on with these customers? So I'm not sure what I do. The advice, the thing I would say, is to make sure that you are, you invest your way through the tumult which is today, you know, whether it's going to be down economy, whether it's going to be pressure from governments around the world. If you take a long-term view, don't worry so much about the short-term and short-term profits. Serve your customers well, serve the governments and cultures in which you serve well, you will come out the back end. I mean, the closest thing I had to deal with was the '08 housing bubble. And it was bad. I mean, it was a, it was a really bad economic time. What did we do as a company? We kept the pedal to the metal. We didn't say, "Revenues down, let's stop investing." And so whatever it takes to innovate and serve customers, I would prioritize that, uh, and certainly as a shareholder, that's what I would ask Satya for.

When, when you look at, you know, we talk about AI again, the, the kind of strength that Microsoft has in that space, how does it continue to move forward? How, and how does AI, I guess, multiply what Microsoft is already doing? You know, it's one of the leaders in the space. How does it continue to stay there?

Yeah, I think there's, there's two things. Will there be a whole new set of products that get built? Yes. Does Microsoft have to be innovating and leading in those products, whether it's the chat product, or other new things that are possible? Yes. And the basic value propositions that Microsoft has always offered, you know, what is it like? What does the front-end user experience like to computing? How do you change it? What is productivity? How do you enhance it? You mentioned the cloud and Microsoft Azure. How do you use AI to enhance, whether it's, or for developers, like GitHub Co-pilot? But you also, as I said at the start, you got to be building those new applications which are only possible today.

I, I want to ask more about your time at Microsoft. I guess, you know, you had a successful run. What was your biggest achievement when you were CEO? What, what do we think is the one thing that stands out for, for you personally?

Yeah, I'd probably say, well, I'd probably say two I'm going to say two things, if you give me two.

Go for it.

People forget the level of competition that Microsoft had, uh, and still does, by the way, but it's easy to say, okay, the competitive set now is, whatever, AWS, blah, blah, blah. We had a lot of competitors in the early 2000s. The company's not going to live another 50 years unless it is successful competitively through a combination of innovation and, you know, variety of other tactics. We competed well, and that gave the company the resources to continue to thrive. And then the second thing I would say is the initiation into the cloud, whether it's what's now M365, Office 365, or Azure. Uh, it is now at a whole another level, and I give Satya a whole lot of credit, but if he hadn't had any assets to build with, uh, and, by the way, he built some of them because he worked for me starting up, as part of, as starting up Azure. So he's done a fantastic job, and it's a different business today. It's a different business, even though we started the cloud. The complexity of building all these data centers and buying all this electricity, it blows my mind. And so I would say cloud, and keeping us kind of afloat through severe competition.

Was, was there any category, you know, of, of software, or, or, or hardware that you wish you had gotten into at, at any particular time?

Yeah, I would say the most important thing that me, we didn't do well was to be in the business of helping somebody in their pocket, phone, um, whatever that will become next, because I think the phone probably disappears into a set of wearables. Uh, that would be the thing I would point most to. Uh, the investments we made in search are really paying off now in the world of AI, but I think it's tough right now since so much of the time, in a sense, you can measure Microsoft's success in the percentage of time, minutes, and the percentage of productivity people get from us. And there's a bit of a missing hole. We get a lot of productivity on those devices, but we don't get as much time on our software, if that makes any sense.

I just have one more question for you. You know, obviously Microsoft has large investments in OpenAI. Are there any other companies out there that you in particular are interested in that are, that are doing something that's, you know, on that level of, of complexity and interest?

On that level? No. No, not on that level. I mean, I'm a large shareholder in OpenAI because I'm a large shareholder in Microsoft. And Microsoft's a lot I have no independent investment. Uh, so, uh, I'm glad to see the company is doing both the investment in that company, as well as the independent innovation that it needs to do, which I think is, is fantastic. But it would be, if someone really said, is there another OpenAI coming in the next three or four years, I almost think that would be a silly question at this stage. I think the market's moved far enough that there's not one big new proposition. I told you AI is the new, it has no antecedents. It's going to be hard for somebody to come in and carve out that kind of a big position. Now, will OpenAI defend against some competitors? I don't know. You have to ask Satya that.