News

Microsoft acquires GitHub for $7.5 billion

Announcement could be made as early as Monday, June 4th

Date Type Companies involved Size
June 4th, 2018 acquisition GitHub
Microsoft
$7.5m
Microsoft acquires GitHub for $7.5 billion

Update: Microsoft has confirmed its acquisition of GitHub for $7.5 billion.

The purchase is set to close before the end of 2018. The announcement said that GitHub will retain its "developer-first" mentality and operate independently from Microsoft.

CEO Chris Wanstrath will become a Microsoft technical fellow and will report to EVP Scott Guthrie.

“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 recognise 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.”

Wanstrath added: “I’m extremely proud of what GitHub and our community have accomplished over the past decade, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead. The future of software development is bright, and I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Microsoft to help make it a reality. 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.”

Original story: Microsoft is reportedly set to make another big money deal later today with the acquisition of code-repository GitHub.

Bloomberg cites “people familiar with the matter” as confirming a deal has been agreed.

GitHub was said to have explored an initial public offering but has agreed to partner up with Microsoft instead, in part after being impressed by CEO Satya Nadella.

No details on how much the deal could be worth were revealed. GitHub was previously valued at $2 billion in 2015.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment.

Popular service

GitHub is a hugely popular platform amongst developers, offering distributed version control and source code management.

One example of a games company using the platform is Epic Games, which lets developers access Unreal Engine 4 C++ source code through the service.

Unity meanwhile has published the Unity engine and editor C# source code on GitHub under a reference only licence.

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Head of Content

Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.