Microsoft announce purchase of GitHub for $7.5 billion

As we reported last night, Microsoft today officially announced that it is acquiring GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform. One important thing to note is that Microsoft will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock, no cash is involved in this deal. GitHub will operate independently and will continue to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries by supporting programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman will become GitHub CEO while GitHub’s current CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow.

Microsoft and GitHub will enable developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, accelerate enterprise use of GitHub, and expand the reach of Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences.

“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “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.”

“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,” 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.”

Microsoft expects the acquisition to get closed by the end of the calendar year.

Source: Microsoft