Microsoft has now acquired GitHub in a $7.5 billion full-stock deal that will close later this year. Rumors were already speculating about the two technology companies being in talks indicating potential acquisition. Microsoft’s stock went up 2 percent right after a report suggested that it may announce the acquisition of the popular code repository.
Nat Friedman, Founder of Xamarin has been announced as the new CEO of GitHub. He will report to Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Chief. GitHub’s previous CEO and Co-Founder, Chris Wanstrath will be joining Microsoft as a Technical Fellow and will also be reporting to the Cloud and AI Chief.
Hosting 85 million repositories and 28 million contributing developers, GitHub enjoys great popularity amongst developers and companies who host their code, entire projects, and documentation on the platform. GitHub is also being used by major technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Google. Competing with GitHub, Microsoft also launched Codeplex but later killed the project to become the top contributor on GitHub with over 1000 employees contributing to code repositories.
This is the second big acquisition of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in a $26.2 billion deal. LinkedIn has largely remained a separate entity just with some integration of Microsoft Office. Microsoft has promised that GitHub will remain independent and open, however, it is yet to be seen how Microsoft will expand GitHub’s enterprise services.
