The platform where all software lives. Over 100 million developers and 420 million repositories. GitHub didn't just host code — it made open-source social and collaborative. Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition in 2018 looked expensive. With Copilot generating $2B+ in annual revenue and GitHub becoming the default developer platform on Earth, it looks like the deal of the decade. The Linux kernel, React, TensorFlow, and virtually every important open-source project lives on GitHub. If GitHub went down for a day, half the software industry would stop working.
Founded
2008
HQ
San Francisco, CA
Total Raised
$350 million (pre-acquisition)
Founder
Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath & PJ Hyett
Status
Acquired by Microsoft (2018) for $7.5 billion
Website
github.comTHE ORIGIN STORY
Tom Preston-Werner and Chris Wanstrath were developers frustrated by existing code hosting platforms. They built GitHub around Git — Linus Torvalds' distributed version control system — and added a social layer: profiles, followers, pull requests, issues, and the ability to "star" and "fork" repositories.
It turned code hosting into a social network for developers. Every open-source project moved to GitHub.
It became the resume for software engineers.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
Freemium SaaS. Free for public repositories.
Teams at $4/user/month. Enterprise at $21/user/month.
Revenue also from GitHub Copilot ($10-39/month AI coding assistant), GitHub Actions (CI/CD compute), GitHub Advanced Security, and GitHub Marketplace. Revenue exceeded $2 billion in 2024.
THE PRODUCTS
GitHub Repositories (code hosting), GitHub Copilot (AI coding assistant), GitHub Actions (CI/CD), Pull Requests, Issues, GitHub Pages, GitHub Advanced Security, GitHub Codespaces (cloud dev environments), GitHub Copilot Workspace.
HOW THEY GREW
AI-powered development through GitHub Copilot. Copilot uses OpenAI models to suggest code in real-time — the most commercially successful AI developer tool.
Also expanding GitHub Actions (CI/CD), GitHub Advanced Security (code scanning), and Copilot Workspace (AI-powered development environment).
THE HARD PART
Balancing open-source community goodwill with Microsoft's commercial interests. When Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018, developers panicked — many feared Microsoft would ruin it.
CEO Nat Friedman (and later Thomas Dohmke) had to prove that GitHub would remain developer-first. So far, they've mostly succeeded.
WHO BACKED THEM
Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, IVP, Institutional Venture Partners
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