Naspers’ Prosus to acquire Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion

Prosus, a global consumer internet group and the international Internet assets division of Naspers, announced that it is acquiring Stack Overflow, a leading knowledge-sharing platform for the global community of developers and technologists, for approximately US$1.8 billion.

Founded in 2008 by co-founders Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, as an open community-based question and answer website for the developer community, Stack Overflow is a highly engaged developer and technologist community serving more than 100 million people across the world every month. 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

Over 85% of its learning-focused community visit the platform every week to access more than 52 million questions and answers

Joel Spolsky says in a blog post 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. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.”

Larry Illg, CEO of EdTech at Prosus, said, “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.”

Illg continued, “With enduring skills shortages and ever-evolving needs within technology organizations, technology training has emerged as the largest and fastest growing segment of corporate learning and development. As an operator of businesses across 90+ countries, we understand the needs of technologists and developers, particularly in high-growth markets. In addition to further scaling its community in the markets we know well, we want to help Stack Overflow Teams to expand within enterprises to address an underserved opportunity to transform their technology learning and collaboration.”

Stack Overflow’s CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, said, “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. Prosus’s expertise growing and nurturing communities, especially in a global context, will make our public platform even more invaluable in helping developers and technologists learn and grow. 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.”

The transaction is expected to close by Q3 of 2021 and is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.