Five big events shaped Microsoft’s 2024

Trump wins the presidential election

The biggest wildcard for Microsoft came late in the year with Trump’s election, which has potential long-range consequences for its AI plans, as well as the cloud, Teams, and more. Trump could squash antitrust actions against Microsoft — or double-down on them. He could award billions of dollars in government contracts to the company — or rescind them. He could use the power of the bully pulpit to badmouth Microsoft — or praise it. 

There’s no way to know what the president-elect might do; Trump himself often doesn’t seem to know. With him, everything is personal. Stroke his ego and good things happen. Criticize him and he’ll loose the power of the government against you.

Since his election, most of Big Tech has been busy doing the former. Meta, AI and OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman have all given $1 million donations for his inauguration. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Google founder Sergey Brin and Apple honcho Tim Cook have had dinners with him. Jeff Bezos has plans to do so soon, and also killed a Washington Postendorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the run-up to the election.