Update: After Business Insider spilled the beans about GitHub’s possible acquisition by Microsoft, Bloomberg published another report on Sunday. Citing sources, it said the Microsoft-GitHub deal received a green signal, and an announcement could arrive on Monday.
The other option GitHub was exploring was to go public, but it chose to be sold off to Microsoft. According to a source who asked not be named, GitHub execs who have been searching for a new CEO for months were “impressed” by the work of Microsoft’s boss Satya Nadella.
Microsoft declined to comment on the report and GitHub didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s email request.
If the rumors turn out to be true, web-based code hosting service GitHub could become a part of Microsoft. Business Insider, citing sources, reports that Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy GitHub.
GitHub was last valued at $2 billion after the company received $250 million in a funding round back in 2015. The move comes in the middle GitHub’s efforts to find a replacement for their founder and ex-CEO Chris Wanstrath who announced his resignation last year.
Sources told BI that Google VP of Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy and Microsoft’s Nat Freidman could be approached to take the position.
It’s not the first time Microsoft has wanted to add GitHub to its shopping cart. Talks are known to have been made in 2016 which GitHub has denied. But the talks resurfaced around six months ago when Redmond thought about a potential marketing partnership which would eventually lead to a full acquisition.
However, for Microsoft, the process may not be as easy as clicking the buy button. It’s being reported that GitHub put a price tag of around $5 billion which is more than what Microsoft wants to pay.
Since its launch in 2008, GitHub is used by millions of independent developers and company, including Microsoft, to host and maintain their open source code. Earlier this year, service suffered the world’s largest DDoS attacks in history at 1.35 Tbps.
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