Instant Alert: Microsoft tried to buy this hot two-year-old startup — and got turned down

MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE   Microsoft tried to buy this hot two-year-old startup — and got turned down by Matt Weinberger on Oct 28, 2015, 1:08 PM Advertisement Microsoft tried to buy Mesosphere, a hot cloud computing startup, for as much as $150 million — but Mesosphere turned them down, reports The Information.  Rumors of a Microsoft/Mesosphere deal first surfaced over the summer, when it came out that the tech giant was interested in Mesosphere's technology for managing the growing market for running data centers at super-high efficiency.  Apparently, the deal fell apart when Mesosphere wanted more than the $150 million that Microsoft was willing to offer, but couldn't find another bidder willing to pay its desired price of $200 million, per the report. Instead, Microsoft and Mesosphere will continue their technology partnership, which integrates Mesosphere's flagship Data Center Operating System (DCOS) product with the Microsoft Azure cloud. DCOS is a commercial version of an increasingly popular free-and-open source project called Mesos that's used by developers. Mesosphere founder Ben Hindman created Mesos while at UC Berkley. Hindman and the other Mesosphere founders brought Mesos into Twitter. Then co-founder Florian Leibert, who previously worked at Twitter, brought it to Airbnb. Mesosphere has benefited from the rising tide of "software containers," a technology that's currently very trendy with developers for helping them write their code once and run it anywhere, on any server infrastructure.  The hottest container software comes from a $1 billion startup called Docker. But Mesosphere's product helps manage and maintain all of those containers at huge scales, fitting in nicely with Microsoft's newfound love for containers.  Thanks to this confluence of trends, Mesosphere has raised $49 million in three rounds from VCs like Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Data Collective, and other big names. The Information report says that Mesosphere is currently fundraising, in the wake of a collapsed deal.  We've reached out to Microsoft and Mesosphere and will update the story if we hear back. SEE ALSO: Why Microsoft might buy a two-year-old startup called Mesosphere for as much as $1 billion   Share the latest business news with your network: Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011