Microsoft Corp has agreed to acquire GitHub Inc, the code repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon yesterday, people familiar with the matter said.
GitHub preferred selling the company to going public and chose Microsoft partly because it was impressed by chief executive officer Satya Nadella, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.
Terms of the agreement were not known on Sunday. GitHub was last valued at US$2 billion in 2015.
The acquisition provides a way forward for San Francisco-based GitHub, which has been trying for nine months to find a new chief executive officer and has yet to make a profit from its popular service that allows coders to share and collaborate on their work.
It also helps Microsoft, which is increasingly relying on open-source software, to add programming tools and tie up with a company that has become a key part of the way Microsoft writes its own software.
Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw declined to comment. GitHub did not return an e-mail seeking request for comment.
GitHub is an essential tool for coders. Many corporations, including Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google, use GitHub to store their corporate code and to collaborate.
It is also a social network of sorts for developers. While GitHub’s losses have been significant — it lost US$66 million over three quarters in 2016 — it had revenue of US$98 million in nine months of that year.
In August last year, GitHub announced that it was looking for a chief executive officer to replace Chris Wanstrath, one of the company’s cofounders.
In the interim, GitHub chief business officer Julio Avalos joined the company’s board of directors and took over much of the day-to-day leadership of the company.
Microsoft has talked to GitHub on and off for a few years.
Recently, they began talks about a partnership, but progressed to discussing an acquisition, according to another person familiar with the situation.
GitHub hosts 27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code.
Microsoft, once opposed to that kind of open-source software development, is now one if the biggest contributors to GitHub.
As Nadella increasingly moves the company away from complete dependence on the Windows operating system to more in-house development on Linux, the company needs new ways to connect with the broader developer community.
Business Insider first reported talks between the companies on Friday.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS