Microsoft is acquiring the popular developer platform GitHub. An agreement was reached recently.
There had long been rumors about acquisition talks between Microsoft and GitHub. Through this website, developers share source code and keep track of different versions of their software.
GitHub is said to have preferred an acquisition by Microsoft over an IPO. Details of the acquisition have not yet been disclosed.
GitHub was last valued in 2015 at 2 billion dollars. The company has been going through a difficult period. The site has been searching for a new CEO for nine months and has not turned a profit since its founding in 2008.
More than 27 million software developers work on around 80 million repositories via GitHub. These repositories are storage locations that, for example, allow all developers on a team to access all versions of their software.
Some repositories are private, a feature for which users must pay. Most are public, providing a way for software developers worldwide to share their work with each other.