GitLab Explores Possible Sale – Report

Popular distributed coding platform GitLab is exploring a sale, amid reports that it has attracted acquisition interest.

This is according to Reuters, which cited people familiar with the matter as its source.

GitLab currently has a market valuation of $8.65 billion, which is down from its capitalisation of nearly $13.5 billion in 2021 reached after its successful initial public offering on Nasdaq in October 2021.

That IPO raised $800 million for the firm and its investors (which includes Alphabet), which counts as clients industry leaders such as Nvidia, Siemens and Goldman Sach.

DevOps platform

GitLab has a workforce of 2,257 spread across 65 countries, with all staff working remotely since the company was formed in 2014.

The GitLab platform was initially created as a source code management system for software development teams.

It later expanded into an integrated offering covering the software development lifecycle, and finally to cover the full DevOps lifecycle.

It is based on a repository manager for Git repositories, similar to competitors such as Microsoft-owned GitHub, SourceForge and Bitbucket.

All are based on Git, initially developed in 2005 for collaborative development of the Linux kernel.

For sale

Now according to the Reuters report, GitLab is working with investment bankers on a sale process that has attracted interest from peers, including cloud monitoring firm Datadog.

Any deal is still weeks away and no agreement is certain, the sources told Reuters, requesting anonymity because the matter is confidential.

GitLab and Datadog did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Alphabet has a 22.2 percent voting stake in GitLab through its venture capital arm, also did not respond to a request for comment.

It comes amid reports that Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for roughly $23 billion after previously exploring an acquisition offer for marketing software company HubSpot, Reuters has reported.