$ cat ./records/microsoft-relocates-from-albuquerque-to-the-seattle-area-1979.txt
Microsoft relocates from Albuquerque to the Seattle area
[RECORD.TXT] · cat --full
Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975 to be near MITS, maker of the Altair computer. After the MITS relationship faded, Bill Gates and Paul Allen moved the young company in January 1979 to Bellevue, Washington — near their Seattle hometown — to tap local engineering talent. The relocation planted Microsoft in the Pacific Northwest, where it would later build its sprawling Redmond campus and help transform the region into one of the world's foremost technology hubs.
Free forever · No ads · Solo developer
If this was worth a read, help make the next entry possible.
Every entry in this archive was researched, verified, and written by one person — for free. No corporate funding. No ad revenue. Just a developer who believes verified history should be accessible to everyone. Your donation directly funds new entries.
Crypto accepted · No subscription required
← Previous
Licensed MS-DOS to IBM for the IBM Personal Computer
Next →
Bill Gates publishes his 'Open Letter to Hobbyists' decrying software piracy
[CROSS_REFERENCES] · grep --category='Business'
Related Accomplishments
2026
Gates becomes 'much poorer' in 2026 as he accelerates giving and slips down the wealth rankings
Bill Gates's net worth fell sharply in 2026 as he accelerated his giving, with trackers noting he had become 'much poorer' — Forbes pegged him around $104 billion and 19th on its global ranking, down from his long reign near the top — as he transfers the bulk of his fortune to the Gates Foundation ahead of its 2045 closure. Gates has said he wants to give away about 99% of his wealth and does not want to be remembered as having 'died rich.' Differences between wealth trackers' methodologies, particularly how charitable pledges are counted, produced a wide range of estimates.
February 2026
Gates told Nadella his $1 billion OpenAI bet would 'burn'; Microsoft now holds a ~27% stake
Satya Nadella revealed that Bill Gates had warned him his early $1 billion bet on OpenAI was a mistake, telling the Microsoft CEO 'yeah, you're going to burn this billion dollars.' The gamble instead became one of the most consequential in tech: a 2025 OpenAI restructuring left Microsoft holding roughly a 27% stake valued around $135 billion, alongside a deal for OpenAI to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of Azure services. The anecdote, surfacing in early 2026, highlighted Gates's continued skepticism even as Microsoft's AI bet paid off.
[ARCHIVE_FUNDING] · INDEPENDENT · NO ADS
One developer. >300 verified entries. Zero ads. Forever free.
No sponsors, no paywall, no algorithm. If this archive has been useful to you, reader support is what keeps it running.