Prosus has announced it is buying Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion, as it increases its focus on the online learning market.
Prosus is a consumer internet group that has investments in the online classifieds, education technology, food delivery and payments and fintech markets. The company is the largest shareholder of Tencent Holdings, the Chinese company behind some of the biggest games, including Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Call of Duty: Mobile and Ring of Elysium.
Prosus appears to be making a major move in the online education market with the acquisition of Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is one of the top 50 websites in the world, with an extremely active user base. In fact, 85% of the site’s community visits every week to access the 52+ million questions and answers, most about programming and development.
“We are delighted to be welcoming Stack Overflow to the Prosus family as we increasingly focus on the future of workplace learning,” Larry Illg, CEO of EdTech at Prosus, said. “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.
“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,” Illg continued. “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.”
“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,” Stack Overflow’s CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, said. “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 deal is expected to close in Q3 2021.