Stack Overflow acquired by Prosus for $1.8 billion

The legendary Q&A website for programmers (and probably one of the most copy-and-pasted sites on the internet) Stack Overflow is being acquired. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Prosus (the primary shareholder of Chinese gaming mega co/WeChat developer, Tencent) will acquire Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion.

Update: Prosus confirms the $1.8 billion number in a press release here.

While perhaps not a name everyone recognizes, Prosus — the international assets holding arm of South Africa’s Naspers — is something of a giant. In 2001, parent company Naspers bought a 46.5% stake in Tencent for $32 million dollars. Earlier this year they sold a 2% stake of Tencent for nearly $15 billion.

Stack Overflow co-founders Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky shared the following shortly after the news broke:

An exciting day! @spolsky called me and let me know. Today's sale of Stack Overflow, most importantly, lets Stack Overflow continue as an independent site — and also mints 61 new millionaires.

— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) June 2, 2021

Thanks and congratulations to @codinghorror, my cofounder, @pchandrasekar, the CEO, hundreds of current and ex-employees who helped build @StackOverflow, and literally millions of developers who have shared their knowledge freely and made programming a little bit better

— Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) June 2, 2021

Spolsky elaborated in a blog post (aptly titled “Kinda a big announcement”) on his personal site, writing:

Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is 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.