In the heart of every crowded metropolis, on almost every carefully paved street, you’ll find at least one business that can brag about making life easier. Or changing how we live — or do things — right now.

But there are few companies in this world that can honestly boast that they’ve changed the course of human history.

Many of these companies are already gone. They sparked an idea and crafted the starter framework. The baton was passed and other companies took that framework, reformed it, and built on it.

Then there is Microsoft.

In this hierarchy of historical achievement, Microsoft stands nearly alone.

This is a company that transformed how the human race itself communicates, and creates things, and even consumes art.

As you read this post, as your brain is absorbing these words right now, you are reading this on a device that was directly influenced by Microsoft.

How you send a text to your brother or write that term paper on remote tribes of the Amazon rain forest or create a soaring musical opus, right now, started at a company that was formed the same year that Saigon fell, and the Vietnam war staggered to an end.

And yet, it still stands.

Microsoft hasn’t always been viewed as the best company, or the most innovative.

But it has always been iconic.

It withstood the test of time. It changed history. It embraced the cloud and is now embracing decentralization.

And it is facing the future, without a flinch.

Right now, we are announcing our partnership with Microsoft. And we could not be prouder or more excited about this new relationship.

XYO is seizing our rightful place in this iconic company’s timeline.

Right frickin’ now.

Where is our focus? Azure. The same cloud platform used by Adobe and Virgin Atlantic and Daimler AG and the Seattle Seahawks.

Thanks to this epic new relationship, XYO beacons — and our network — will be available with Microsoft Azure, the company’s wildly popular suite of cloud services for business.

Push-button geospatial blockchain apps will become part of Azure. Configurable smart contracts and decentralized apps will become part of Azure.

And we will have access to all the other namedrop-worthy companies that partnered Microsoft before us, from Ernst & Young to Accenture to Consensys.

Right now, processes and commands are running on your Smart TV. Your phone. Even at the ATM you’re waiting to use. They may not be Microsoft’s processes and commands, but trust us — they are influenced by Microsoft.

And thanks to this powerful new partnership, they’ll be influenced by XYO as well.

Welcome to the family, Microsoft!