Who would buy it?
Mid sized newer companies likes Hashicorp or datadog or vercel who target developers as customers .
Gitlab gives access to a large audience of developers to cross sell most dev tools so all these orgs can get a lot of returns paying more than the standalone value of gitlab itself.
The best fit would be companies like Hashicorp who have strong open source pedigree so users won’t be turned off and leave
In my mind just like LinkedIn , GitHub and Microsoft are every distinct entities with a lot of differences on how they work , Hashicorp and IBM parent are different and will remain so. Integrating into Hashicorp for Gitlab would be very different than integrating into IBM core with different values for both businesses .
GitLab supports storing the Terraform state and includes Terraform templates however they are moving to OpenTofu in 18.x [2]
1. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/secrets/hashicorp_vault.html 2. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/deprecations.html
If an acquisition has to make sense there should be a clear path to monetize it, for IBM core or its HashiCorp unit or any other buyer that will not just be through some light integrations alone, they can achieved with partnerships after all you don't need to buy the organization for it.
HashiCorp might not be the best fit anymore. Last year, they switched to a license that isn't open source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37081306
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/google-backed-software...
Given New Relic is a direct competitor, Bill Staples' background makes even more sense.
I seriously don't understand the deals being made in tech. Most of the makes no sense, not even retrospectively. I get Microsoft buying Github, that was a part of their open source strategy and they've always put a high value on developers.
I wouldn't buy them for that myself, but Gitlab made $200 million in revenue in Q3 2024 [1]. So $800 million a year in revenue.
I've seen worse purchases.
[1] https://ir.gitlab.com/news/news-details/2024/GitLab-Reports-...
There might be some potential for Gitlab complement your other business, in which case you may not see the lack of profit as that big of an issue. The problem is that if you can't make those $8billions back in future profit, then you're going to start making changes to the Gitlab offerings until they do become profitable.
That might be what the new CEO is suppose to do, pump up those numbers, and make it look like a sane investment.
The main question is probably the price.
I would be excited if IBM acquired them and put them under the red hat umbrella, because as history has shown, it may mean that gitlab ends up becoming much more open. They may open up the entire product instead of doing the open core model.
AWS shut down their service, if AWS can "easily" integrate with Gitlab, I see a lot of potential on the deployment side to increase AWS revenue.
Google isn't know for its hands-off approach nor long term view for service growths. Gitlab is essential to balance Github's impact, I'd hate it to go in the graveyard.