Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018 for $7.5 billion, according to Thomas Dohmke.
“we bought GitHub in 2018, so now, you know, a little bit over seven years ago, for $7.5 billion at a time”
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Thomas Dohmke
2 episodes · 37 quoted claims
Dohmke says GitHub's last revenue figure before the acquisition was $200 million, and that it later reported $2 billion, a tenfold increase.
“when the last published revenue number was 200 million, uh, year before that, and and you mentioned last year we published te 2 billion, so the revenue has ten times increased”
Microsoft announced in its earnings that GitHub Copilot had 20 million users.
“we just announced in Microsoft earnings that we now have 20 million, uh, users on on GitHub Copilot”
Dohmke says Visual Studio Code has 50 million users.
“we have 50 million users on, uh, fifty s five zero million users on Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code”
GitHub built a Model Context Protocol server that Dohmke says many coding agents now use.
“built an MCP a model context protocol integration, uh, and now all these, uh, uh, coding agents are using the GitHub MCP server”
Dohmke says OpenAI Codex generates four variants of every task so users can pick the one they prefer.
“If you look at OpenAI Codex, they are already generating four variants of every task that you're giving”
Dohmke says GitHub still runs a Ruby on Rails monolith that is as old as the company.
“we have a uh, Ruby on Rails monolith, uh, that is now as old as GitHub is”
Dohmke says Cursor was first to adopt Claude Sonnet 3.5 and to offer developers a choice of multiple models.
“They were the first, you know, with Claude Sonnet 3.5, so they were also, you know, ahead of the curve of saying, okay, multiple models”
Dohmke relays the view that Claude Sonnet's main advantage over other models is its ability to pick the right tool at each agent step.
“if you believe YouTubers and bloggers and and experts like Simon Willison, Sfix and others, where really it outcompetes other models, is tool use”
Dohmke says many GitHub Copilot competitors run their model inference on Microsoft Azure.
“where many of those competitors actually run their model inference on Azure”
Dohmke says the original GitHub Copilot ran inference on a large language model at every keystroke, which he called unheard of at the time.
“because on every single keystroke, we're running inference against a large language model”
Dohmke says the original GitHub Copilot came from a partnership in which OpenAI supplied GPT-3 and the Codex model while Microsoft supplied infrastructure.
“that's how the original Copilot came to be, uh, through a partnership between OpenAI, um, who had developed GPT three, and then the Codex model, Microsoft”
Dohmke says GitHub believes Copilot's business is bigger than Cursor's.
“given that, you know, we are very open about that, we believe Copilot is, uh, bigger than Cursor”
Dohmke says top AI engineers, including the Windsurf team and people courted by Meta, receive offers comparable to professional basketball players' contracts.
“get offers that match professional basketball players. Some of them even have agents helping them to land a new contract”
Thomas Dohmke co-founded HockeyApp, which was sold to Microsoft in late 2014.
“I was the co founder of a company called Hockey app, um, that we sold to Microsoft in late 2014.”
Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub was announced in 2018.
“seven years after we announced the acquisition in 2018”
GitHub announced in July 2024 that its annual revenue run rate had passed $2 billion.
“We announced, um, uh, in July of uh, 2024, uh, over 2 billion run rate”
Dohmke says GitHub and Microsoft defined three integration principles for the acquisition: developers first, Microsoft accelerating GitHub, and GitHub accelerating Microsoft later.
“we actually defined, uh, the three, um, acquisition principles, or integration principles”
GitHub Actions was built using technology from Azure Pipelines, part of Azure DevOps, which was brought into GitHub along with part of its team in early 2019.
“an existing technology, um, out of Azure DevOps, um, uh, called Azure pipelines, um, uh, and and brought that into into GitHub”
Dohmke says GitHub had about 800 employees when Microsoft acquired it.
“in GitHub, you know, at the time of the acquisition, was about 800 employees”
Dohmke says LinkedIn and Minecraft are the other Microsoft acquisitions most often named alongside GitHub as successes.
“the other two that are always, you know, listed in a similar realm are LinkedIn”
Microsoft's 2019 OpenAI investment and partnership gave GitHub access first to GPT-3 and then to the Codex model, which it used to build the original GitHub Copilot.
“That gave us access to, uh, first GPT 3 and then the Codex model, uh, to to build”
GitHub launched the technical preview of Copilot in June 2021.
“June 2021 is when we launched the preview of Copilot”
Dohmke says Copilot had about a million users on its waitlist within a year of the preview.
“I think we had a million users on the waitlist, um, uh, uh, within less than a year”
GitHub Copilot reached general availability in June 2022, before ChatGPT launched.
“what we call GA, general availability, was was June 2022”
Dohmke said GitHub Copilot had 15 million users, as reported in Microsoft's earnings the week before the recording.
“Copilot has now 15 million, uh uh, users, uh, and the Copilot code review agent”
GitHub's study that found Copilot users 55% faster gave 50 developers a task without Copilot and 50 with it.
“we gave 50 developers, uh, a task, um, to do it without Copilot and 50 with Copilot”
Dohmke says GitHub built the ghost text interface for code completion together with the VS Code team for the original Copilot.
“That didn't exist like we built that in partnership with the VS Code team for the original Copilot.”
Dohmke describes the SWE-bench benchmark as pairs of issues and pull requests drawn from a dozen Python repositories.
“which is two zero pairs of issues and pull requests from a dozen Python repos”
Dohmke says that on the multilingual version of SWE-bench, built by its founders, agent scores fall to roughly the 20s to 30 percent range.
“with this multilingual, um, I think the numbers go significantly down”
Dohmke says GitHub ships a new Copilot code completion model every month, chosen using offline and online tests of how many suggested characters developers accept and keep.
“we are now, uh, shipping a new code completion model, uh, uh, every month”
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke circulated a company memo making AI use a baseline expectation, which GitHub later adapted in modified form.
“Toby Lutke, the Shopify CEO, recently had this, you know, memo for the whole company saying AI is now, you know, baseline expectation at Shopify.”
Before becoming GitHub CEO, Dohmke ran Microsoft's engineering systems team, whose major project cut the Office suite build time from days to about eight hours.
“one of their biggest projects was bring down the build time for the office suite, uh, from days, um, down to”
Dohmke says the turbo switch on 386 PCs was meant to slow the machine down so software tightly optimized for the hardware, such as games, would not run too fast.
“the turbo switch wasn't to make things faster, it was to slow down”
Dohmke says GitHub hosts more than 500 million repositories.
“it certainly doesn't give you the scale of hosting, you know, more than 500 million repos”
GitHub's design system is called Primer.
“the one that we have at GitHub is called Primer”
Dohmke says he bought a Commodore 64 around 1991, which is where he really learned to code.
“my early experience on a Commodore sixty four, which I bought, I think, in 1991”