Michael J. Saylor (born February 4, 1965) is an American entrepreneur, business executive, and philanthropist, best known as the founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy (now rebranded as Strategy). He rose to prominence in the 1990s as a pioneer in business intelligence software and has since become a major figure in the cryptocurrency industry due to his aggressive corporate adoption of Bitcoin. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to a military family, Saylor spent much of his childhood living on various United States Air Force bases. His family eventually settled in Fairborn, Ohio, near the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Saylor’s academic career was marked by early achievement; he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on an Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) full scholarship. At MIT, he was a member of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity, where he met Sanju Bansal, his future business partner. Saylor graduated with highest honors in 1987, holding dual degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, and in science, technology, and society. In 1989, at age 24, Saylor and Bansal co-founded MicroStrategy, a company initially focused on computer simulation modeling and data mining before pivoting to enterprise business intelligence software. The company achieved rapid growth during the 1990s and went public on the NASDAQ in 1998. Under Saylor’s leadership, MicroStrategy became a global provider of analytics and mobility software. His entrepreneurial efforts also extended to other ventures; he founded Alarm.com, a prominent home automation and security company, and Angel.com, a cloud-based interactive voice response provider which was later sold. Saylor's career has faced significant regulatory and legal challenges. In March 2000, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into MicroStrategy for its financial reporting practices. In December 2000, Saylor and two other executives settled civil accounting fraud charges with the SEC without admitting or denying wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, Saylor paid $350,000 in penalties and provided $8.3 million in personal disgorgement. In a separate legal matter, Saylor settled a tax fraud lawsuit with the District of Columbia in 2024, agreeing to pay a $40 million fine to resolve allegations that he avoided taxes while misrepresenting his residency. In 2020, Saylor orchestrated a pivotal shift in his company's treasury management strategy. He began investing the company's capital in Bitcoin, asserting that it served as a superior store of value and an inflation hedge compared to traditional assets. This initiative transformed MicroStrategy—often referred to in financial media as a "Bitcoin whale"—into the largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency. To focus exclusively on this strategy, Saylor transitioned from his role as CEO to executive chairman in August 2022, handing the CEO position to Phong Le. The company’s focus on the digital asset eventually led to a corporate rebranding to Strategy in 2025. Beyond his business activities, Saylor has authored books, including *The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything* (2012), and founded the Saylor Academy in 1999, a nonprofit organization that provides free online education and professional development courses to students worldwide.