Prosus, one of the largest technology investors in the world, has  announced that it is acquiring Stack Overflow for US$1.8 Billion. Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar described this as "tremendously exciting news".

In its press release, Prosus, which has headquarters in Amsterdam and is owned by the South African multinational Naspers, describes Stack Overflow as one of the 50 most popular websites in the world and states that it has:

built a global company and highly engaged developer and technologist community over the last 13+ years, now serving more than 100 million people across the world every month.

It goes on to state that having been founded in 2008 as an open community-based question and answer website for the developer community,  the company has expanded to include Stack Overflow for Teams:

a leading knowledge management and collaboration solution that thousands of the top enterprises around the world trust.  

As we reported when it came out of beta three years ago, Stack Overflow for Teams is a subscription service targeted at teams of developers within companies who want a secure, private space to ask and answer questions that they wouldn't want any outsiders to overhear. Teams now has a free tier for up to 50 member. For up to 250 team members there's a Basic plan at $6 per teammate per month while the Business plan, for unlimited teammates and additional features including priority customer support is $12 per teammate per month. There's also an Enterprise level with Custom pricing and flexible hosting options.

Originally known as Stack Overflow Channels at its launch in  2017, the products business objectives included "to Make Money" - and this goal has already come to fruition big time as it must be generating a revenue sufficient to attract a $1.8 billion investment.

Prosus already owns stakes in Udemy and Codecademy and also in Skillsoft, a publisher of training software used by businesses and sees Stack Overflow as increasing its portfolio of "corporate learning companies". The press release states:

Prosus has built a significant presence on the enterprise side with a focus on the future of workplace learning. Prosus will reach 90% of the Fortune 100 across its corporate learning companies including Stack Overflow, Skillsoft, Udemy and Codecademy.

It quotes Larry Illg, CEO of EdTech at Prosus as saying

“We are delighted to be welcoming Stack Overflow to the Prosus family as we increasingly focus on the future of workplace learning. Learning of any kind typically begins with a question and their platform is critically important for global developers when they have questions about their work. There is an opportunity to connect more deeply with their community through our other education platforms to further fulfill their learning needs.”

Stack Overflow CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, responded with:

“We are excited to be joining the Prosus family, which catapults us into a new phase of growth and allows us to expand and accelerate Stack Overflow’s impact around the world.

Given Prosus’s focus on the future of the workplace, their partnership will allow our market leading SaaS collaboration product, Stack Overflow for Teams, to reach thousands more global enterprises, allowing them to accelerate product innovation and increase productivity by unlocking institutional knowledge.”

As far as the developer community is concerned it is unlikely that this acquisition will be particularly noticeable on day-to-day interactions on Stack Overflow Maybe instead of a new question being asked every 15 seconds on average, the rate may increase. Will it impact the rate at which questions are answered and accepted? We will have to wait until after the transaction closes at the end of Q3 2021 to find out.

More Information

Prosus to acquire Stack Overflow for US$1.8 billion

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