Microsoft announces the acquisition of software development platform GitHub for $7.5 billion

Microsoft CEO Satya Narayana Nadella. Reuters[/caption]The two companies will empower developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, accelerate enterprise use of GitHub, and bring Microsoft's developer tools and services to new audiences."Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation," said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, in a statement."We recognise the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world's most pressing challenges," he added.Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin and an open source veteran, will assume the role of GitHub CEO. Github has a community of over 28 million developers worldwide. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of this calendar year.GitHub's current CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow, reporting to Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie. "The future of software development is bright, and I'm thrilled to be joining forces with Microsoft to help make it a reality," Wanstrath said.Github platform hosts a growing network of developers in nearly every country representing more than 1.5 million companies across healthcare, manufacturing, technology, financial services, retail and more.GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in its last funding round in 2015. In a separate blog, Nadella wrote: "From the largest corporations to the smallest startups, GitHub is the destination for developers to learn, share and work together to create software."It's a destination for Microsoft too. We are the most active organization on GitHub, with more than 2 million "commits," or updates, made to projects." Nadella said that Microsoft will always listen to developer feedback and invest in both fundamentals and new capabilities.This is the second biggest acquisition by Microsoft in recent times. The tech giant acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016.