MicroStrategy Incorporated,

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

Strategy, is an American development company that provides

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

(BI), mobile

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

, and cloud-based services. Founded in 1989 by Michael J. Saylor, Sanju Bansal, and Thomas Spahr, the firm develops software to analyze internal and external data in order to make business decisions and to develop mobile apps. It is a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...

headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, in the

Washington metropolitan area The Washington metropolitan area, also referred to as the National Capital Region, Greater Washington, or locally as the DMV (short for Washington, D.C., District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), is the metropolitan area comprising Washing ...

. Its primary business analytics competitors include

SAP AG Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a sep ...

Business Objects A business object is an entity within a multi-tiered software application that works in conjunction with the data access and business logic layers to transport data. Business objects separate state from behaviour because they are communicated a ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Cognos Cognos Incorporated was an Ottawa, Ontario-based company making business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in over ...

, and

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

's BI Platform. Saylor is the Executive Chairman and, from 1989 to 2022, was the CEO. Since 2020, the company's securities are widely considered to be a

bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

proxy due to MicroStrategy's holdings of the

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

. The company's executive chairman has compared it to a bitcoin spot leveraged ETF, though it's not a regulated

investment fund An investment fund is a way of investment, investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These ad ...

. As of December, 2024, MicroStrategy was reported to own 423,650 bitcoins, worth $42.43 billion, and is the largest corporate holder of the asset.

History

Saylor started MicroStrategy in 1989 with a consulting contract from

DuPont Dupont, DuPont, Du Pont, duPont, or du Pont may refer to: People * Dupont (surname) Dupont, also spelled as DuPont, duPont, Du Pont, or du Pont is a French surname meaning "of the bridge", historically indicating that the holder of the surname re ...

, which provided Saylor with $250,000 in start-up capital and office space in

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington is the List of municipalities in Delaware, most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish colonization of the Americas, Swedish settlement in North America. It lie ...

. Saylor was soon joined by company co-founder Sanju Bansal, whom he had met while the two were students at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT). The company produced software for

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

and

using nonlinear mathematics, an idea inspired by a course on systems-dynamics theory that they took at MIT. In 1992, MicroStrategy gained its first major client when it signed a $10 million contract with

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

. It increased revenues by 100% each year between 1990 and 1996. In 1994, the company's offices and its 50 employees moved from Delaware to Tysons Corner, Virginia. On June 11, 1998, MicroStrategy became a

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

. The company sold 36 million shares of its common stock, each share priced at $6, under the stock ticker "MSTR" on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

stock exchange. In 2000, MicroStrategy founded Alarm.com as part of its

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...

unit. On March 20, 2000, after a review of its accounting practices, MicroStrategy announced that it would restate its financial results for the preceding two years. Its stock price, which had risen from $7 per share to as high as $333 per share in a year, fell to $120 per share, or 62%, in a day in what is regarded as the bursting of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

. Following MicroStrategy Inc.'s March 20, 2000 announcement that it had significantly overstated its 1998 and 1999 revenues, approximately two dozen class action securities fraud actions were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against MicroStrategy. In December 2000, the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

brought charges against the company and its executives. A lawsuit was subsequently filed against MicroStrategy and certain of its officials over fraud. In December 2000, Saylor, Bansal, and the company's former CFO settled with the SEC without admitting wrongdoing, each paying $350,000 in fines. The officers also paid a combined total of $10 million in disgorgement. The company settled with the SEC, hiring an independent director to ensure regulatory compliance. In February 2009, MicroStrategy sold Alarm.com to

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm ABS Capital Partners for $27.7 million. The company introduced

OLAP In computing, online analytical processing (OLAP) (), is an approach to quickly answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries. The term ''OLAP'' was created as a slight modification of the traditional database term online transaction processi ...

Services with a shared data set cache to accelerate reports and ad hoc queries. In 2010, the company began developing and deploying business intelligence software for mobile platforms, such as the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

. In 2011, MicroStrategy expanded its offerings to include a cloud-based service, MicroStrategy Cloud. In 2013, MicroStrategy sold

Angel An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...

to Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories for $110 million. In January 2014, the company announced a new feature of the platform called PRIME (Parallel Relational In-Memory Engine), co-developed with

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. In October 2014, the company announced plans to lay off 770 employees, a month after reducing Saylor's salary from $875,000 to $1 at his request. In June 2015, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 10. In the fall of 2018, the company released MicroStrategy 11. In January 2019, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 2019. In February 2020, the company announced MicroStrategy 2020. In August 2022, the Attorney General for the

District of Columbia Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

sued Saylor for tax fraud, accusing him of illegally avoiding more than $25 million in D.C. taxes by pretending to be a resident of other jurisdictions. MicroStrategy was accused of collaborating with Saylor to facilitate his

tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...

by misreporting his residential address to local and federal tax authorities and failing to withhold D.C. taxes. MicroStrategy said the case is "a personal tax matter involving Mr. Saylor" and called the claims against the company "false" and it would "defend aggressively against this overreach." In June 2024, Saylor and MicroStrategy reached a $40 million settlement agreement with the District of Columbia. Saylor resigned as CEO effective August 8, 2022. Phong Le, who had been president, succeeded him. Saylor remains the executive chairman of MicroStrategy. In a press release announcing the transition, Saylor said that he would focus on the company's bitcoin acquisition strategy and that Phong would manage overall corporate operations.

Bitcoin purchases

In August 2020, MicroStrategy invested $250 million in

as a treasury reserve asset, citing declining returns from cash, a weakening dollar, and other global

macroeconomic Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes regional, national, and global economies. Macroeconomists study topics such as output/ GDP ...

factors. The company went on to make several additional large purchases of bitcoin; as of September 19, 2022, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries held approximately 130,000 BTC, acquired at an aggregate purchase price of $3.98 billion at an average purchase price of $30,639 per bitcoin. Saylor is the main driver behind this strategy. On the company's quarterly earnings call on May 3, 2022, MicroStrategy CFO Phong Le stated that the company would face a

margin call ''Margin Call'' is a 2011 American drama film written and directed by J. C. Chandor in his feature directorial debut. The principal story takes place over a 24-hour period at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the ...

if bitcoin's price fell to about $21,000. A margin call would obligate the company to sell some of its bitcoin holdings. Le stated that the company could add more collateral to its loan to avoid such a situation. After bitcoin's price fell to about $20,800 in June 2022, the company said that it had not received a margin call and that it had enough capital to withstand further volatility. On December 22, 2022, MicroStrategy sold 704 BTC, which represented their first time selling any bitcoin, for an amount of around $11.8 million. On September 25, 2023, MicroStrategy announced that, during the period between August 1, 2023, and September 24, 2023, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries acquired approximately 5,445 bitcoins for approximately $147.3 million in cash, at an average price of approximately $27,053 per bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses. As of December 8, 2024, MicroStrategy was reported to own 423,650 bitcoins, worth $42.43 billion, and is the largest corporate holder of the asset. MicroStrategy purchased 149,880 bitcoins in the month beginning on November 11, 2024. On the strength of this asset, MicroStrategy was included in the

Nasdaq-100 The Nasdaq-100 (NDX) is a stock market index made up of equity securities issued by 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. It is a modified capitalization-weighted index. The stocks' weights in the inde ...

effective December 23, 2024.

Products

MicroStrategy 2020 is the latest platform release of the company's business intelligence software. MicroStrategy 2019, the prior platform release, attempted to improve connectivity to data sources and applications and allow for easier mobile application development. it also offered Bluetooth identity detection and voice. The earlier suite of software, MicroStrategy 10, consisted of MicroStrategy Analytics, MicroStrategy Mobile, and Usher. MicroStrategy 10.10, released in December 2017, added MicroStrategy Workstation. It uses business intelligence and

predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of Statistics, statistical techniques from data mining, Predictive modelling, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or other ...

to search through and perform analytics on

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

from a variety of sources, including

data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business intelligence, reporting and data analysis and is a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central Re ...

s, Excel files, and

Apache Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. It provides a software framework for distributed storage and processing of big data using the MapReduce programming model. Hadoop wa ...

distributions. MicroStrategy Mobile, introduced in 2010, incorporates analytics capabilities to apps for

, Android, and

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

. Usher is a digital credential and identity intelligence product for organizations to control digital and physical access. It replaces physical badges and passwords with secure digital badges, and generates information on user behavior and resource usage.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Microstrategy Bitcoin 1989 establishments in Virginia Business intelligence software Software companies based in Virginia Online analytical processing Companies based in Fairfax County, Virginia American companies established in 1989 Software companies established in 1989 Companies listed on the Nasdaq Big data companies Business analysis Business intelligence companies Business software companies Data companies Data and information visualization software 1998 initial public offerings Software companies of the United States