Nadella: Microsoft bought GitHub to stay in the startup feedback loop
Satya Nadella · Satya Nadella describes how lessons from Microsoft’s history apply to today’s boom · Nov 18, 2025 · at 13:57
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, describes the strategic logic behind Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub to Stripe co-founder John Collison.
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“That's what sort of led me even to GitHub and Nat and all of the rest which is to some degree, the GitHub asset, right? Obviously, it is a great asset. We needed to, one, be good stewards of an open source ecosystem. But it also the place where every startup, like the one thing that everybody does have is their repos in GitHub, and I felt like, hey, Being in that loop was important for us, not just, oh, it's strategically great to have some position there, to learn simply, and to build better product”
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