Committed Capital to Invest in the Future of Open Source Software

We believe the open source economy is poised for explosive growth. That’s why we’re thrilled to partner with GitHub to invest in the next generation of open source entrepreneurs.

For nearly five decades, the development and deployment of software has been a predominantly enterprise endeavor. However, the open source software movement has brought rapid change, and today’s reality places strong emphasis on developer community, shared participation in the development process, and the free exchange of ideas among distributed and diverse teams of developers. Additionally, as one of the fastest-growing segments in software markets, as measured by several metrics ranging from market cap to IPO, we have conviction that open source software will continue to become more and more central to the software economy. 

For all these reasons, M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, is proud to announce we’ve partnered with GitHub to launch the M12 GitHub Fund to make investments in promising open source startups developing on GitHub’s platform. This joint fund will empower exceptional developers to build the future of open source software and provide them with meaningful resources and unique value to enable them to achieve their visions and goals. 

Born out of Microsoft and GitHub’s shared belief that developers are the heartbeat of enterprise progress and innovation, the companies we invest in are at the earliest stages of development, and we will focus on making investments at the seed stage. It’s here we know we can have the greatest impact, and provide the capital, connections, access, and benefits founders need to make their mark. 

We’re delighted to highlight the first startup that has received our first investment out of the M12 GitHub Fund. Congratulations to CodeSee, an open source platform that enables developer teams to visually understand their codebases. Codesee is equipping developers with the best tools to unleash their capabilities and productivity and is shaping the way software developers work on their world-changing projects. This is central to why the M12 GitHub Fund was founded.

We look forward to growing our M12 GitHub Fund portfolio and working closely with the next generation of paradigm-changing new companies that will transform the open source economy.