Code-hosting platform GitHub has announced that 100 million developers are now using the platform.

The figure represents a substantial hike on the 3 million users GitHub counted exactly 10 years ago, the 28 million it claimed when Microsoft acquired it for $7.5 billion five years ago, and the 90 million-plus it revealed just three months ago.

GitHub has come a long way since its launch back in 2008, and now serves as the default hosting service for millions of open source and proprietary software projects, allowing developers to collaborate around shared codebases from disparate locations.

For Microsoft, GitHub serves to help ingratiate it with software development sphere, having initially treated open source software with more than a little disdain, while it’s also using GitHub and its associated data — somewhat controversially — to develop a new AI-powered pair programmer called Copilot. But perhaps more importantly for Microsoft, in the near-term at least, is that the various GitHub paid plans on offer now contribute around $1 billion annually to its coffers.

During a keynote back in 2019, former CEO Nat Friedman said that the company was aiming for 100 million developers by 2025. So it seems that it has hit that milestone a good two years ahead of plan.

GitHub says it now has 100M active users by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch