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.[8] In 1994, the company's offices and its 50 employees moved from Delaware to Tysons Corner, Virginia.[10]
On March 20, 2000, after a review of its accounting practices, the company announced that it would restate its financial results for the preceding two years.[13] 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.[14]
In December 2000, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against the company and its executives.[15] A lawsuit was subsequently filed against MicroStrategy and certain of its officials over fraud.[16] 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.[17][18]
In February 2009, MicroStrategy sold Alarm.com to venture capital firm ABS Capital Partners for $27.7 million.[12] The company introduced OLAP Services with a shared data set cache to accelerate reports and ad hoc queries.[19] In 2010, the company began developing and deploying business intelligence software for mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and iPad.[20]
In 2011, the company expanded its offerings to include a cloud-based service, MicroStrategy Cloud.[21]
In January 2014, the company announced a new feature of the platform called PRIME (Parallel Relational In-Memory Engine), co-developed with Facebook.[24]
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.[25]
In June 2015, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 10.[26]
In the fall of 2018, the company released MicroStrategy 11.[27]
In January 2019, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 2019.[28]
In February 2020, the company announced MicroStrategy 2020.[29]
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.[7]
Bitcoin purchases
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.[30][31] 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.[32] 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.[33] On December 22, 2022, MicroStrategy sold 704 BTC, which represented their first time selling any bitcoin, for an amount of around $11.8 million.[34]
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.[35] On the strength of this asset, MicroStrategy was included in the Nasdaq-100 effective December 23, 2024, although it will need to survive a classification review in April 2025 to determine if it should be categorized as a financial firm.[36]
Controversies
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.[37]
On August 31, 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.[38] 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."[39] In June 2024, Saylor and MicroStrategy reached a $40 million settlement agreement with the District of Columbia.[40]
MicroStrategy 2020 is the latest platform release of the company's business intelligence software.[29]
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.[27][28][41] 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.[42] 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.[43]
MicroStrategy Mobile, introduced in 2010, incorporates analytics capabilities to apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry.[24]
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.[44][45]
