Template:Short description {{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other{{#invoke:Check for clobbered parameters|check|nested=1|template=Infobox company|cat=Template:Main other|name; company_name|logo; company_logo|logo_alt; alt|trade_name; trading_name|former_names; former_name|type; company_type|predecessors; predecessor|successors; successor|foundation; founded|founders; founder|defunct; dissolved|hq_location; location|hq_location_city; location_city|hq_location_country; location_country|num_locations; locations|areas_served; area_served|net_income; profit|net_income_year; profit_year|owners; owner |homepage; website }}{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox company with unknown parameter "_VALUE_" | ignoreblank=y | alt | area_served | areas_served | assets | assets_year | aum | brands | company_logo | company_name | company_type | defunct | dissolved | divisions | embed | equity | equity_year | fate | footnotes | former_name | former_names | foundation | founded | founder | founders | genre | homepage | hq_location | hq_location_city | hq_location_country | incorporated | image | image_alt | image_caption | image_size | image_upright | income_year | industry | ISIN | key_people | location | location_city | location_country | locations | logo | logo_alt | logo_caption | logo_class | logo_size | logo_upright | members | members_year | module | name | native_name | native_name_lang | net_income | net_income_year | num_employees | num_employees_year | num_locations | num_locations_year | operating_income | owner | owners | parent | predecessor | predecessors | production | production_year | products | profit | profit_year | rating | ratio | revenue | revenue_year | romanized_name | services | subsid | successor | successors | traded_as | trade_name | trading_name | type | website| qid | fetchwikidata | suppressfields | noicon | nocat | demo | categories }}
MicroStrategy Incorporated, doing business as Strategy,<ref name="strategy-rebrand">Template:Cite news</ref> is an American development company that provides business intelligence (BI), mobile software, 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 headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, in the Washington metropolitan area.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Its primary business analytics competitors include SAP AG Business Objects, IBM Cognos, and Oracle Corporation's BI Platform.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Howson13">Template:Cite news</ref> Saylor is the Executive Chairman and, from 1989 to 2022, was the CEO.<ref name="Jaffe00">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="2019-10-K">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="cnbc-2022-08-02">Template:Cite news</ref>
Since 2020, the company's securities are widely considered to be a bitcoin proxy due to MicroStrategy's holdings of the cryptocurrency. The company's executive chairman has compared it to a bitcoin spot leveraged ETF,<ref name="cnbc-2022-08-02"/> though it's not a regulated investment fund.
HistoryEdit
Saylor started MicroStrategy in 1989 with a consulting contract from DuPont, which provided Saylor with $250,000 in start-up capital and office space in Wilmington, Delaware. Saylor was soon joined by company co-founder Sanju Bansal, whom he had met while the two were students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).<ref name="Glasser96">Template:Cite news</ref> The company produced software for data mining and business intelligence using nonlinear mathematics,<ref name=Jaffe00 /> an idea inspired by a course on systems-dynamics theory that they took at MIT.<ref name="Salter00">Template:Cite news</ref>
In 1992, MicroStrategy gained its first major client when it signed a $10 million contract with McDonald's. It increased revenues by 100% each year between 1990 and 1996.<ref name=Glasser96/> In 1994, the company's offices and its 50 employees moved from Delaware to Tysons Corner, Virginia.<ref name="Leibovich02">Template:Cite news</ref>
On June 11, 1998, MicroStrategy became a public company via an initial public offering. The company sold 36 million shares of its common stock, each share priced at $6, under the stock ticker "MSTR" on the NASDAQ stock exchange.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2000, MicroStrategy founded Alarm.com as part of its research and development unit.<ref name="Takahashi09">Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref name="Hilzenrath00a">Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite case</ref> In December 2000, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against the company and its executives.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref> A lawsuit was subsequently filed against MicroStrategy and certain of its officials over fraud.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In February 2009, MicroStrategy sold Alarm.com to venture capital firm ABS Capital Partners for $27.7 million.<ref name=Takahashi09/> The company introduced OLAP Services with a shared data set cache to accelerate reports and ad hoc queries.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2010, the company began developing and deploying business intelligence software for mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and iPad.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2011, MicroStrategy expanded its offerings to include a cloud-based service, MicroStrategy Cloud.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2013, MicroStrategy sold Angel to Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories for $110 million.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In January 2014, the company announced a new feature of the platform called PRIME (Parallel Relational In-Memory Engine), co-developed with Facebook.<ref name="idev1" />
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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In June 2015, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 10.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In the fall of 2018, the company released MicroStrategy 11.<ref name="Holak">Template:Cite news</ref>
In January 2019, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 2019.<ref name="Marshall">Template:Cite news</ref>
In February 2020, the company announced MicroStrategy 2020.<ref name="search1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In August 2022, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia 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 by misreporting his residential address to local and federal tax authorities and failing to withhold D.C. taxes.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In June 2024, Saylor and MicroStrategy reached a $40 million settlement agreement with the District of Columbia.<ref name="Hirsch 2024">Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref name="cnbc-2022-08-02" />
Bitcoin purchasesEdit
In August 2020, MicroStrategy invested $250 million in bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, citing declining returns from cash, a weakening dollar, and other global macroeconomic factors.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> On December 22, 2022, MicroStrategy sold 704 BTC, which represented their first time selling any bitcoin, for an amount of around $11.8 million.<ref>MicroStrategy Incorporated MicroStrategy</ref>
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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On the strength of this asset, MicroStrategy was included in the Nasdaq-100 effective December 23, 2024.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
ProductsEdit
{{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters | check | showblankpositional=1 | unknown = Template:Main other | preview = Page using Template:Infobox software with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y | AsOf | author | background | bodystyle | caption | collapsetext | collapsible | developer | discontinued | engine | engines | genre | included with | language | language count | language footnote | latest preview date | latest preview version | latest release date | latest release version | latest_preview_date | latest_preview_version | latest_release_date | latest_release_version | licence | license | logo | logo alt | logo caption | logo upright | logo size | logo title | logo_alt | logo_caption | logo_upright | logo_size | logo_title | middleware | module | name | operating system | operating_system | other_names | platform | programming language | programming_language | released | replaced_by | replaces | repo | screenshot | screenshot alt | screenshot upright | screenshot size | screenshot title | screenshot_alt | screenshot_upright | screenshot_size | screenshot_title | service_name | size | standard | title | ver layout | website | qid }}Template:Main other MicroStrategy 2020 is the latest platform release of the company's business intelligence software.<ref name=search1 />
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.<ref name="Holak" /><ref name="Marshall" /><ref name="Brust">Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It uses business intelligence and predictive analytics to search through and perform analytics on big data from a variety of sources, including data warehouses, Excel files, and Apache Hadoop distributions.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
MicroStrategy Mobile, introduced in 2010, incorporates analytics capabilities to apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry.<ref name="idev1">Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
Template:Bitcoin Template:Nasdaq-100 Template:Dot-com Bubble