Red Hat (1993-2019)
Red Hat built an enterprise business around freely licensed Linux software, becoming the first open-source company to pass $1 billion in annual revenue. IBM acquired it in 2019 for $34 billion.
Red Hat proved open-source infrastructure could be sold to the Fortune 500 at scale.
The acquisition showed open-source layers become valuable consolidation targets once they demonstrate traction.
A possible endgame for AgentConnect: if self-hosted agent orchestration catches on, the project or its team becomes an acquisition target for a cloud provider or AI vendor.
