GitHub is a software platform widely used by software developers to discuss issues, store code, and keep track of updates. It’s a privately held company with over 23 million individual users across 1.5 million organizations. Reports suggest that Microsoft has been thinking about acquiring GitHub for the past few years and has recently held serious talks with the company about this.
The recent talks between Microsoft and GitHub were initially for a joint marketing partnership that have since reportedly advanced into talks related to a possible investment or an outright acquisition. It’s unclear if the talks are still ongoing but a report claims that the price GitHub wanted was more than what Microsoft was willing to pay.
It’s not known how much GitHub asked for but the company was last valued at $2 billion when it raised its funding round back in 2015. A price floated last year suggests that the acquisition price tag could be $5 billion or more.
It merits mentioning here that this isn’t the first time that Microsoft is believed to have been interested in acquiring GitHub. Such reports came up back in 2016 as well but were denied by GitHub at that time. GitHub and Microsoft have not commented on this report as yet.