Microsoft purchases GitHub

Microsoft is acquiring GitHub. After reports emerged that the software giant was in talks to acquire GitHub, Microsoft is making it official today. This is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s second big acquisition, following the $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn two years ago. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion back in 2015, and Microsoft is paying $7.5 billion in stock for the company in a deal that should close later this year. (Microsoft acquires GitHub). ​

CEO Satya Nadella's remarks about the deal suggest Microsoft was motivated not only by product synergies, but also by a desire to more generally become a larger provider of software and services to developers as enterprise software spending keeps rising at a much faster pace than IT spending in general. That could motivate the company, which has a massive domestic cash balance in the wake of tax reform, to ink additional deals to buy platforms that are popular with web and cloud developers. (Why the Microsoft - GitHub deal makes sense).