Updated: Microsoft Confirms Acquisition Of GitHub Code Development Platform

Updated: 6/4/2018 @ 9:22am
Microsoft has confirmed its acquisition of GitHub in a company blog post, and the deal is valued at $7.5 billion. “Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “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.”

Original Story
Over the weekend, rumors turned up that claimed software giant Microsoft was set to purchase source code version control and hosting service GitHub. At the time the rumor first surfaced, it was said that GitHub was valued at $2 billion as of 2015 and that it could potentially sell for $5 billion today. The lofty price tag of GitHub is why Microsoft, though it considered buying the company previously, never actually pulled the trigger. Sources close to the deal are now saying that could change, with an acquisition announcement possibly forthcoming today.

Today's Microsoft is very different from the Microsoft of years ago, when the company was very focused on developing proprietary software. The Microsoft of today under CEO Satya Nadella actually even supports different Linux distros and is one of the largest contributors to the code repository on GitHub currently. Sources close to the deal say that GitHub decided to sell rather than go public and decided to work with Microsoft because of Nadella and the direction he is taking Microsoft.

Terms of the deal are unknown at this time, but with that $2 billion valuation as of 2015, the deal would presumably be more than that as of today. While GitHub management and Microsoft may be excited about the deal, some in the developer community working via GitHub aren’t happy at the thought of Microsoft owning the repository service.

Microsoft hasn't offered any statements on the rumored deal, other than to say it doesn’t comment on rumors. GitHub could certainly use the cash infusion from a software company like Microsoft with deep resources. GitHub has been performing in the red for a while now, reportedly having lost $66 million over three quarters in 2016 with revenue of $98 million over nine months of 2016. More current financial metrics are unknown, however. GitHub currently hosts 27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code.