Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS for $250 Million

Red Hat, known for its Enterprise Linux distribution, has signed an agreement to acquire CoreOS for $250 million, or just over $200 million.

CoreOS, in turn, is known for products such as the Kubernetes platform Tectonic and the Linux distribution Container Linux, both of which are related to running containerized applications. Red Hat reports that with the acquisition of CoreOS, it aims to “enable customers to build applications and deploy them in any environment with the flexibility of open source software.” Containers play an important role in this, according to the company.

CoreOS’s products would complement Red Hat’s proprietary OpenShift container platform; the same would be true for Container Linux as a complement to Enterprise Linux. However, that distribution remains Red Hat’s only Linux option, the company writes in a faq. Integrating products from both companies and transferring customers should take place in the coming months. It should also become more clear in the future about making all CoreOS products open source.

Founded in 2013, CoreOS has approximately 130 employees and is headquartered in San Francisco. North Carolina-based Red Hat has more than 10,000 employees. Both companies have contributed to the development of Kubernetes since it was announced by Google in 2014.