Prosus to Acquire Stack Overflow for $1.8 Billion

A global tech company is acquiring New York City headquartered Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion.

Prosus N.V., a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, announced last week that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Stack Overflow, a leading knowledge-sharing platform for the global community of developers and technologists, for approximately $1.8 billion.

Stack Overflow, one of the 50 most popular websites in the world, 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. 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. Stack Overflow for Teams and their extensive community content have become a necessity to enterprises, having a meaningful impact on their product and technology development.

Stack Overflow has deep engagement within its community and is an invaluable tool for tech-focused collaboration and learning. Over 85 percent of its learning-focused community visit the platform every week to access more than 52 million questions and answers. There is a new question asked on Stack Overflow every 14 seconds, and developers and technologists visiting the platform have been helped 50+ billion times since its inception.

With expertise in scaling communities in high-growth markets globally, Prosus can help accelerate Stack Overflow’s growth ambitions, with a particular focus on reaching a wider international community, while also further scaling the company’s Teams product to position Stack Overflow at the center of product and technology development within major enterprises globally.

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

Larry Illg, chief executive officer 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 Chief Executive Officer, 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.

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