Strategy

Strategy Inc, still trading under the Nasdaq ticker MSTR, is a United States based enterprise analytics provider and Bitcoin Treasury Company.

Formerly known as MicroStrategy, the firm combines a long standing business intelligence software business with one of the largest corporate Bitcoin treasuries in the world, positioning itself as a high beta proxy on Bitcoin alongside a traditional AI driven analytics platform.

Overview

Strategy operates in two tightly linked domains. On one side, it sells an enterprise grade AI plus BI platform, Strategy One, used for data analytics, reporting and embedded intelligence across large organizations. On the other, it manages a highly leveraged Bitcoin balance sheet and a complex capital markets program that offers investors equity and debt securities tied to the company’s growing Bitcoin holdings.

CryptoSlate’s coverage of Strategy’s balance sheet has highlighted that the firm controls a significant share of outstanding Bitcoin, with holdings in the hundreds of thousands of BTC and unrealized gains that fluctuate with the wider market. See CryptoSlate’s insight on Strategy’s share of circulating Bitcoin for more detail at Strategy now owns 3% of all Bitcoin in circulation.

History and rebrand

The company was founded in 1989 by Michael J. Saylor, Sanju Bansal and Thomas Spahr as MicroStrategy, focusing on enterprise business intelligence software and analytics. It went public in 1998 during the dot com era and spent the next two decades competing in the business intelligence market. In August 2020, the firm made its first major Bitcoin purchase as a treasury reserve asset, marking the beginning of a multi year transition from a pure software vendor to a hybrid analytics and Bitcoin treasury vehicle.

On February 5, 2025 MicroStrategy announced a rebrand, saying it would do business as “Strategy” to reflect its identity as a Bitcoin Treasury Company and a public business intelligence provider. CryptoSlate covered the rebrand and its Bitcoin focus in MicroStrategy rebrands to Strategy, reinforces Bitcoin Treasury focus. The legal name change to Strategy Inc became effective in August 2025, completing the transition while the stock continued to trade under the MSTR ticker.

Core products and services

Despite the market focus on its Bitcoin holdings, Strategy continues to operate a substantial enterprise software business. The company’s core platform, now marketed as Strategy One, is an AI plus BI suite that integrates data modeling, reporting and advanced analytics for large organizations. It is delivered as a cloud native platform that can run across major hyperscale clouds and supports both governed enterprise reporting and self service analytics.

• Strategy One analytics platform — unified AI driven business intelligence with dashboards, pixel perfect reports and ad hoc analysis tools for enterprise users.
• Semantic and AI layer — a semantic graph and AI assistants designed to map business concepts to data, enabling natural language style querying and guided insight generation.
• Embedded and mobile analytics — tools to embed reports and insights into third party applications and deliver analytics to web and mobile clients.
• HyperIntelligence style features — contextual insights injected into existing workflows, such as surfacing key metrics directly in commonly used business applications.

These software offerings are sold through subscriptions and services, and Strategy continues to position itself as an independent enterprise analytics provider.

Bitcoin treasury model

Strategy’s most distinctive feature is its Bitcoin treasury strategy. Beginning with a 21,454 BTC purchase in 2020, the company has repeatedly raised capital through at the market equity programs and zero coupon convertible notes in order to buy more Bitcoin. Over time, this has turned the balance sheet into a very large Bitcoin position held alongside a comparatively smaller software business.

CryptoSlate has followed the expansion of these holdings as filings update the numbers, including coverage of record quarters for BTC accumulation and incremental purchases that pushed the treasury above 600,000 BTC and later toward roughly 3 percent of circulating supply.

Examples include Strategy expands Bitcoin holdings to record 649,031 BTC despite MSTR stock slump and earlier analyses of its multi billion dollar capital raise plans in MicroStrategy’s $42 billion Bitcoin plan. Strategy internally tracks metrics such as “BTC Yield” and “BTC Gain” to measure how its financing program increases Bitcoin per diluted share over time.

Use cases and market position

For enterprise customers, Strategy competes with other analytics and BI platforms, serving large organizations across industries that require governed data models, regulatory compliant reporting and AI enhanced analysis. Strategy One’s AI focus, semantic layer and cross cloud deployment options are designed to appeal to organizations consolidating fragmented analytics stacks.

In capital markets, Strategy is widely regarded as a de facto Bitcoin proxy. Investors who cannot or do not wish to hold spot Bitcoin directly, or who prefer equity exposure, may use MSTR to gain leveraged exposure to Bitcoin price movements, since the majority of the firm’s value is tied to its Bitcoin stash.

CryptoSlate has examined how this positioning affects valuation in reports such as Is MicroStrategy undervalued? and more recent coverage of flows into and out of MSTR as spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds have matured.

Funding, leadership and governance

Strategy has been a public company since 1998 and finances its Bitcoin accumulation through a combination of common equity, preferred stock and convertible debt offerings. The company has repeatedly expanded its authorized share count and executed sizeable at the market equity programs, raising tens of billions of dollars that have been directed primarily into Bitcoin purchases. This approach has increased Bitcoin exposure per share over certain periods but also introduces dilution risk for existing shareholders.

Executive Chairman and founder Michael Saylor remains the key public face and strategic architect of the Bitcoin treasury program, while Phong Le serves as Chief Executive Officer. CryptoSlate has reported on shareholder actions and legal challenges tied to Strategy’s capital structure and Bitcoin focus, including coverage of potential “lawfare” and governance disputes in Strategy and Metaplanet add over 23k BTC in 2 weeks while Strategy faces potential lawfare.

Risks and considerations

Strategy’s model concentrates several types of risk. The stock has historically shown high correlation with Bitcoin and can be more volatile than the underlying asset, since leverage and equity issuance amplify both gains and drawdowns. CryptoSlate has highlighted episodes where MSTR significantly underperformed Bitcoin during downturns or structural shifts in capital flows, as discussed in Why did Wall Street just dump $5.4 billion in Strategy MSTR stock?.

Beyond price volatility, investors and observers point to balance sheet leverage, the possibility of forced asset sales if financing conditions deteriorate, and regulatory or accounting uncertainties around large scale corporate Bitcoin treasuries.

Centralization concerns have also emerged, given that a single listed company holds several percent of all Bitcoin, a topic explored in Strategy and the centralization question. Transparency has been debated as well, including Strategy’s decision not to implement on chain proof of reserves, covered in Strategy’s Michael Saylor rejects on chain proof of reserves.

As a result, Strategy occupies a unique niche at the intersection of enterprise analytics software and high conviction Bitcoin balance sheet management. For market participants, it functions simultaneously as a technology vendor and as a structural expression of long term Bitcoin bullishness, with risk and reward profiles that differ meaningfully from both pure software peers and direct spot Bitcoin exposure.