GitLab is exploring the possibility of selling itself. There is reportedly interest from competitors in the market for an acquisition. Datadog is mentioned here by name.
Datadog is said to be interested in acquiring GitLab. The provider of cloud-based software development tools went to work with that interest to prepare a sale process. By the way, Datadog would not be the only company interested in an acquisition but it is the only one mentioned by name by Reuters. Reuters learned the information through conversations with anonymous sources.
Market value of $8 billion
No certainty can yet be given about a possible deal, and an acquisition will not be announced in the coming days. GitLab would have to re-privitize itself for an acquisition. The company’s market value is estimated at $8 billion. 22.2 percent of the shares are owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company. About 45 percent remained in the hands of co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij.
In the past, GitLab has indicated difficulty in offering a competitive offering in terms of price. Direct competitor GitHub can put a sharper offer in the market because it is fully owned by Microsoft.
Completing cloud app offerings
An acquisition of GitLab would complete Datadog’s offering. Both are active in cloud tools and offer part of a package for developers. More specifically, the parties deal in the DevSecOps domain. GitLab markets tools for developers and the monitoring of the software development cycle, whereas Datadog has an offering for measuring application performance.
Also read: Datadog aims for ‘best in show’ on cloud efficiency