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Prosus
PRX -.56%
NV claimed it struck a $1.8 billion offer to acquire Stack Overflow, an online group for application builders, in a guess on escalating need for on-line tech discovering.
Centered in New York, intently held Stack Overflow operates a concern-and-respond to web page employed by software developers and other styles of employees these as economical experts and entrepreneurs who increasingly have to have coding competencies. It draws in more than 100 million readers monthly, the company says.
Prosus, a person of Europe’s most useful tech organizations, is best regarded as the biggest shareholder in Chinese net and videogaming huge
Tencent Holdings Ltd.
Shown in Amsterdam, Prosus signaled its hunger for deal earning when it sold a tiny part of its equity stake in Tencent in April for $14.6 billion. The Stack Overflow offer ranks amid Prosus’ most significant acquisitions.
Prosus invests globally across a variety of on the net platforms concentrated on parts this kind of as foodstuff delivery, classifieds and fintech. It also maintains a extra than $200 billion holding in Tencent. Prosus’ parent organization,
Naspers Ltd.
, obtained the Tencent stake in 2001 for $34 million.
The Stack Overflow offer is Prosus’ 1st outright acquisition in the academic tech area. Prosus already owns stakes in two academic tech companies—Udemy and Codecademy—servicing corporations. It is established to make an investment in Skillsoft, a publisher of schooling computer software applied by businesses as component of that firm’s system to merge with exclusive-intent acquisition corporation
Churchill Money Corp II
and record in New York.
Prosus is betting that firms will continue to construct out technological know-how to support distant working and on the internet schooling prolonged after the Covid-19 pandemic recedes.
“The pandemic introduced this sector to the forefront and what we are heading to see in the coming months is a wave of consolidation,” pushing the organization to make acquisitions or danger shedding out on targets, reported
Larry Illg,
who oversees educational tech investments at Prosus.
Prosus is attaining Stack Overflow from the company’s founding venture-money traders, which include Union Sq. Ventures Index Ventures Andreessen Horowitz Bezos Expeditions, an expense auto of
Amazon.com Inc.
founder
Jeff Bezos
Spark Money Silver Lake and GIC, the Singaporean sovereign-prosperity fund.
Stack Overflow’s website is no cost to accessibility. It generates promotion profits from providers selling technologies merchandise and wooing possible tech workforce.
The organization also offers a membership software-as-a-service products known as Stack Overflow for Groups to firms that want access to a private edition of the community system for their staff to collaborate. That product’s characteristics contain the capacity to combine with other equipment such as GitHub, a coding-collaboration web site that
Microsoft Corp.
obtained for $7.5 billion in 2018.
Siemens AG
,
Chevron Corp.
, Microsoft and Liberty Mutual Group are amid the organizations applying Stack Overflow for Teams, explained
Prashanth Chandrasekar,
the company’s main executive.
About 85% of the corporations that use Stack Overflow’s Groups item are primarily based in the U.S. Prosus aims to extend that platform geographically such as in producing marketplaces like India, in which it has already had good results expanding on the internet platforms such as its PayU payments business.
“The ability to replicate that success internationally is a enormous focus” for the deal, Mr. Chandrasekar said.
Stack Overflow will also achieve accessibility to the organization prospects of Prosus’ other portfolio corporations in the educational tech sector, the businesses mentioned.
Produce to Ben Dummett at ben.dummett@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The Stack Overflow offer ranks between Prosus’ major acquisitions. An previously model of this short article improperly stated the deal was Prosus’ largest acquisition. (Corrected on June 2)
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Appeared in the June 3, 2021, print edition as ‘Tencent Investor Prosus to Purchase Stack Overflow.’
