HashiCorp Reportedly Being Acquired By IBM [UPDATE] (cnbc.com) 36
According to the Wall Street Journal, a deal for IBM to acquire HashiCorp could materialize in the next few days. Shares of HashiCorp jumped almost 20% on the news.
UPDATE 4/24/24: IBM has confirmed the deal valued at $6.4 billion. "IBM will pay $35 per share for HashiCorp, a 42.6% premium to Monday's closing price," reports Reuters. "The acquisition will be funded by cash on hand and will add to adjusted core profit within the first full year of closing, expected by the end of 2024." HashiCorp's shares continued to surge Tuesday on the news. CNBC reports: Developers use HashiCorp's software to set up and manage infrastructure in public clouds that companies such as Amazon and Microsoft operate. Organizations also pay HashiCorp for managing security credentials. Founded in 2012, HashiCorp went public on Nasdaq in 2021. The company generated a net loss of nearly $191 million on $583 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, according to its annual report. In December, Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp, whose family name is reflected in the company name, announced that he was leaving.
Revenue jumped almost 23% during that period, compared with 2% for IBM in 2023. IBM executives pointed to a difficult economic climate during a conference call with analysts in January. The hardware, software and consulting provider reports earnings on Wednesday. Cisco held $9 million in HashiCorp shares at the end of March, according to a regulatory filing. Cisco held early acquisition talks with HashiCorp, according to a 2019 report.
UPDATE 4/24/24: IBM has confirmed the deal valued at $6.4 billion. "IBM will pay $35 per share for HashiCorp, a 42.6% premium to Monday's closing price," reports Reuters. "The acquisition will be funded by cash on hand and will add to adjusted core profit within the first full year of closing, expected by the end of 2024." HashiCorp's shares continued to surge Tuesday on the news. CNBC reports: Developers use HashiCorp's software to set up and manage infrastructure in public clouds that companies such as Amazon and Microsoft operate. Organizations also pay HashiCorp for managing security credentials. Founded in 2012, HashiCorp went public on Nasdaq in 2021. The company generated a net loss of nearly $191 million on $583 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, according to its annual report. In December, Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp, whose family name is reflected in the company name, announced that he was leaving.
Revenue jumped almost 23% during that period, compared with 2% for IBM in 2023. IBM executives pointed to a difficult economic climate during a conference call with analysts in January. The hardware, software and consulting provider reports earnings on Wednesday. Cisco held $9 million in HashiCorp shares at the end of March, according to a regulatory filing. Cisco held early acquisition talks with HashiCorp, according to a 2019 report.
Cue the enshittification (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Dude... IBM acquired Lotus Notes in 1995. That was 30 years ago.
Maybe you should look at work IBM has done more recently? How many of the people in charge of the Lotus acquisition do you think are still running IBM?
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
MySQL and Java went to Oracle, not IBM
Re:Cue the enshittification (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat... or more specifically IBM's recent shenanigans with RHEL and sabotage of CentOS, Amazon Linux, and the like... is a better and much more current example than Lotus. And it's a fine example as to why the pessimism wrt/ Hachicorp and Terraform is justified.
Re: (Score:3)
That issue has nothing to do with IBM. This issue with controlling source redistribution has a been a longstanding and challenging issue with RedHat going back more than 10 years. It just came to a head recently when RH stopped pushing their spec files to git. Several RH folk are on record as saying this move was not influenced in anyway by anyone in the parent company. In fact they didn't even inform IBM execs of this nor would they have needed to since they are their own business unit.
Can't blame IBM
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:1)
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:4, Informative)
Amazon Linux 1 and 2 were based on RHEL (6 and 7, respectively). After the RHEL shenanigans, Amazon Linux 2023... isn't. AL2023 is a half-baked, poorly-done derivative of Fedora. Seriously... just try it and compare and contrast versus AL2. I did. I was neither happy nor impressed, and am not looking forward to AL2 going EoL.
Re: (Score:2)
fortunately, rocky linux is a fine replacement
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:1)
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:4, Interesting)
If the bullshit hashicorp has been pulling lately towards open source projects is anything to go by, I'd say hashicorp have no problem self-enshitifying. With luck IBM will throw them in the barn with Red Hat and we might see an actual improvement in corporate behavior (red hat are no saints, but at least their lawyers are kept on a leash)
Re: (Score:2)
IBM also did a pretty bang-up job of running Rational and Tivoli's products into the ground, and they're already messing up Red Hat as well.
This will probably spur some innovation, though. We got Git because IBM screwed up Rational ClearCase source control, and JIRA because they messed up Rational ClearQuest defect management. I'd imagine that we'll soon get a cool replacement for Terraform as well.
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:4, Interesting)
Enshitification requires something to be good first, this doesn't apply to shitty cloud software. Being the least shit out of shittier options is not good.
I mean if IBM's explicit goal was to buy good software and turn it to shit, there isn't much juice to squeeze out of hard devops turds.
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:2, Troll)
Re: Cue the enshittification (Score:2)
Sounds like you got replaced by automation? Still self hosting and rarely patching your infrastructure? Terraform is actually amazing to work with, and creates far more secure environments than manual configuration. Just deriding something you've clearly never used for being "cloud" wreaks of the unemployment line.
REPLACED!? As-fucking-if. How? It's job security. Terraform creates jobs. It creates work, and it has lots of friends! Devops automation does not replace IT workers because terraform modules, CI/CD pipelines and all the other god damned yaml don't write themselves. They certainly don't maintain themselves, they're very fragile, and impede change.
No, sir, I have my hand firmly up terraform's ass and am absolutely covered with cloudy stink. It's like working with your hands wearing a sticky mitten.
Now I'm goi
Re: (Score:3)
Will Hashicorp tools return to Free licenses? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm excited to see how this turns out. Red Hat had a long history of acquiring non-Free software (like Ansible Tower) and then re-licensing it under a Free Software license. IBM has also been a good steward of Free Software projects like OpenJDK.
haha (Score:2)
Re:Will Hashicorp tools return to Free licenses? (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually agree with this. Say what you like about RH, but that track record does stand. A more recent example is buying the StackRox container security firm and open sourcing it.
I still maintain that Red Hat should have bought HashiCorp ages ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that history ended when IBM bought them. Anybody expecting anything else is naive. Well, maybe they will do the occasional PR project, but do not expect anything substantial.
Re: Will Hashicorp tools return to Free licenses? (Score:1)
RIP Terraform (Score:2)
Re:RIP Terraform (Score:5, Insightful)
That was a while ago, when they changed the license for Terraform. Meet OpenTofu! [opentofu.org]
Re: RIP Terraform (Score:2)
Aaaaahh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So that explains the license change [hashicorp.com] last August. Valuation bump and/or a demand from IBM in order to close the sale.
Re: (Score:2)
It does. Smart people are already on the fork (OpenTofu) that does not fuck you over. 3rd party support should not be a problem either.
Moving away from Terraform has gotten urgent (Score:2)
Obviously, IBM will try to squeeze customers as much as possible (see Red Hat) while not caring enough for the product and generally making it worse fast. OpenTofu has a bright future.
fix TF Cloud (Score:3)
Explains many things (Score:1)
That definitely makes sense considering HashiCorp latest shit-oss movements. IBM is not an OSS friend. They have messed fedora, redhat, centos and now the trend continues.
Over 40 need not apply (Score:2)
I hope anyone at Hashicorp who's reached 40 or older is updating their resume. IBM may win in courts against ageism claims, but that's not the same as not practicing it.
Better Not Be White If You Use Hashicorp (Score:2)
Want to jump ship? (Score:1)