GitHub is a vast code repository that has become popular with developers and companies hosting their projects, documentation, and code. Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other big tech companies use GitHub. Microsoft has more than 1,000 employees actively pushing code to repositories on GitHub.
Microsoft said it was paying $7.5bn (£5.6bn) in stock to achieve the deal, which is due to be completed before the end of the year. It said Github would continue to operate independently. GitHub was valued at $2 billion in its last funding round in 2015, though it has yet to turn a profit.
“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. “We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Microsoft vice president Nat Friedman will assume the role of GitHub CEO, the company said, taking over for the developer platform’s founder Chris Wanstrath. “The future of software development is bright, and I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Microsoft to help make it a reality,” Wanstrath said. “Their focus on developers lines up perfectly with our own, and their scale, tools and global cloud will play a huge role in making GitHub even more valuable for developers everywhere.”
GitHub has more than 28 million developers in more than 1.5 million organizations.
