Tech investment company Prosus NV has acquired Stack Overflow, arguably the most popular collaboration platform (opens in new tab) for programmers, in a deal valued at $1.8 billion.
The Stack Overflow deal is one of Amsterdam-based Prosus’ largest, and reportedly its first outright acquisition in the edtech space, which has been a focus area for the firm with investments in a handful of startups such as online learning platform (opens in new tab) Udemy, and Codecademy (opens in new tab).
The company is also the largest shareholder in Chinese internet and video gaming giant Tencent, despite selling a 2% stake in early 2021 for about $15 billion.
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“We are delighted to be welcoming Stack Overflow to the Prosus family as we increasingly focus on the future of workplace learning,” said Larry Illg, CEO of EdTech at Prosus.
More of the same
Talking about the deal, Stack Overflow co-founder Joel Spolsky shared that the best part about the acquisition is that the new owners have no plans of interfering with the operations of Stack Overflow.
“Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices,” wrote Spolsky.
He added that the company’s Software-as-a-Service (opens in new tab) (SaaS) product, Stack Overflow for Teams, remains the priority for the platform. Offered only as a paid product since its launch in 2018, the SaaS platform is available for free for teams of up to 50 people (opens in new tab), since March 2021.
This resonates in Illg’s statement as well, who said that as operators of businesses across the world, Prosus understands the needs of technologists and developers.
“In addition to further scaling its community in the markets we know well, we want to help Stack Overflow [for] Teams to expand within enterprises to address an underserved opportunity to transform their technology learning and collaboration,” added Illg.
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Via TechCrunch (opens in new tab)
