Microsoft is acquiring GitHub. After reports emerged that the software giant was in rumors to acquire GitHub, Microsoft is making it official today. This is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s second big acquisition, following the $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn two years ago. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion back in 2015, and Microsoft is paying $7.5 billion in stock for the company in a deal that should close later this year.
GitHub is a huge code repository that has been very popular with developers and companies hosting entire projects, documentation, and code. Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other famous technology companies use GitHub. There are more than 85 million repositories hosted on GitHub, and 28 million developers contribute to them. GitHub will now be led by CEO Nat Friedman, the founder of Xamarin, who will report to Microsoft’s Cloud and AI chief Scott Guthrie. GitHub CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath will now become a technical partner at Microsoft, also reporting into Guthrie.
It’s easy to imagine why Microsoft wants to acquire GitHub. Microsoft killed its own GitHub competitor, Codeplex, in December and is now the top contributor to GitHub, Microsoft now has more than 1,000 employees actively pushing code to GitHub repositories. Its popularity among developers could see Microsoft earn some much-needed trust and respect from developers. In larger enterprises and slower moving businesses, the fact Microsoft has acquired GitHub will make it more trusted to use for projects and source control, simply because Microsoft is already trusted across many software and services by these companies.>
Developers are the builders of the technology era, writing the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.
The acquisition comes amid the San Francisco-based company’s nearly year-long search for a new CEO, as well as its first profit from its services. Founded in 2008, GitHub hosts 27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code.
The deal is expected to help Microsoft by adding programming tools and partner with a company that has become a key way in how Microsoft writes its software.
