Rumor: Microsoft wants to acquire Wunderlist

Microsoft would like to acquire the Berlin start-up 6Wunderkinder, the company behind the to-do-list app Wunderlist. Sources report this based on people who would be close to the takeover. Neither party has yet to comment.

The German Manager Magazin reported on Wednesday that Microsoft is now in advanced talks with 6Wunderkinder. VentureBeat writes based on its own sources that Microsoft will probably pay less than 250 million dollars, converted 224 million euros, for 6Wunderkinder. The start-up was valued at $60 million by investment company Sequoia in 2013. Both companies declined to comment on the potential acquisition to Manager Magazin.

Microsoft has been taking over more app developers lately. For example, the company announced in December last year that it had bought the company behind the mail app Acompli for iOS and Android. Those apps were then converted to Outlook for iOS and Outlook for Android. In February, Microsoft acquired the Sunrise calendar app. Microsoft may also want to integrate the functionality of Sunrise and Wunderlist into its own apps, such as Outlook and OneNote.

In 2010, 6Wunderkinder was founded by six programmers. In November of that year, the start-up launched the app that made it famous: Wunderlist. Wunderlist is a to-do-list app with cloud functionality and available for Windows, iOS, Mac OS and Android, among others. Created lists can be accessed from almost any internet-connected device. The app can be used with a free account, but a paid pro account adds more features that are aimed at collaboration, among other things. Wunderlist was named App of the Year by Apple in 2013. The app now has nearly 13 million users.

Last week, 6Wunderkinder released a public API for Wunderlist, which allows Wunderlist tasks to be accessed in other apps and vice versa. Some developers have already built support for Wunderlist into their apps. Microsoft is one of them: its own note-taking app OneNote can already work with Wunderlist. Sunrise is also one of the first API partners.

6Wunderkinder is one of the many start-ups that have been based in the German capital for several years. For example, web store Zalando, audio platform Soundcloud and social network ResearchGate have their headquarters there. Investors such as Sequoia, Atomico and Earlybird have invested around $24 million in 6Wunderkinder so far.