Steve Ballmer: Imagine Cup & BizSpark Awards

Remarks by Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer
Beijing, China
May 24, 2011

(Awards presented.)

STEVE BALLMER: Well, to all the winners and to all the participants, congratulations. (Applause.)

I’ll be on the road traveling all week, but the most exciting thing for me is to have an opportunity to see these kinds of innovations, students, startups, driving hard, doing incredibly innovative and interesting work.



Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with Imagine Cup winners in Beijing on May 24, 2011. At center are (from left) Chairman of Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Group Ya-Qin Zhang, Ballmer, and Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region Simon Leung.

Certainly congratulations to both the Imagine Cup teams, and the BizSpark winners.

But before we close today, I want to share one other important announcement with you. Since 2008, Microsoft has contributed more than 340 million renminbi in software and development tools to support 625 different startup companies here in China. Those startups now employ over 3,000 people.

Today, I’m excited to have a chance to announce that we’re going to commit to extend and provide additional software, development tools, worth an additional 1.4 billion renminbi over the course of the next five years. (Applause.)

We expect that that commitment will support an additional 3,000 different startup companies here in China as they strive to create cutting-edge applications for the next generation of services and applications that I had a chance to describe.

Innovation is definitely a journey. It starts with a big idea and the passionate pursuit of that big idea.

And whether it’s the work we’re doing at Microsoft or the great work that startups are pursuing here in China and around the world, we look forward to a very exciting and prosperous and innovative journey together.

Thank you all very much. It’s been my pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you. (Applause.)