Prosus has bought Stack Overflow, an online community for software developers, in a $1.8bn deal as it seeks to capitalise on the demand for online learning.

Prosus is one of Europe’s most valuable tech companies and investors and is the largest shareholder in Chinese tech giant Tencent.

It is its first acquisition in the edtech space, but already owns stakes in Udemy and Codecademy, and is set to make an investment in Skillsoft, a training software.

The edtech space has become increasingly attractive to investors during the pandemic. Last month Norwegian game-based learning company Kahoot bought Californian startup Clever in a deal worth up to $500m.

“We are delighted to be welcoming Stack Overflow to the Prosus family as we increasingly focus on the future of workplace learning,” Larry Illg, chief executive of edtech at Prosus.

“With enduring skills shortages and ever-evolving needs within technology organizations, technology training has emerged as the largest and fastest growing segment of corporate learning and development… In addition to further scaling its community in the markets we know well, we want to help Stack Overflow Teams to expand within enterprises to address an underserved opportunity to transform their technology learning and collaboration.”

There is a new question posted on Stack Overflow every 14 seconds, and developers and technologists visiting the platform have been helped over 50bn times since its launch.

The deal is expected to close by the end of third quarter and is subject to regulatory approval.

“We are excited to be joining the Prosus family, which catapults us into a new phase of growth and allows us to expand and accelerate Stack Overflow’s impact around the world,” Stack’s chief executive Prashanth Chandrasekar.

“Given Prosus’s focus on the future of the workplace, their partnership will allow our market leading SaaS collaboration product, Stack Overflow for Teams, to reach thousands more global enterprises, allowing them to accelerate product innovation and increase productivity by unlocking institutional knowledge.”