Microsoft acquires GitHub (2018)
Microsoft paid $7.5 billion in stock for GitHub, the code-hosting service then used by tens of millions of developers including engineers at Amazon, Google and Apple. Rivals worried Microsoft would degrade the service or mine private repositories for competitive intelligence. Microsoft kept GitHub independent under CEO Nat Friedman.
Most users stayed. Some moved private code to GitLab or Bitbucket, but GitHub's developer base kept growing past 100 million accounts.
GitHub became the launchpad for Microsoft's AI coding push, including GitHub Copilot. Microsoft used its developer mindshare to seed AI-coding distribution, which now shapes the same lab-controlled tool stack Anthropic is buying into.
A large platform bought the developer infrastructure its rivals depended on. The 2018 deal showed an acquisition can quietly tilt a developer ecosystem toward the new owner, even without obvious lockouts.
