GitHub says its Sponsors program has now directed more than $100 million to open source maintainers and projects since launching in 2019, marking a concrete funding milestone for developer infrastructure that is often treated as free shared plumbing.

The company said the program now supports more than 70,000 maintainers and organizations and has drawn more than 280,000 sponsors, ranging from individual developers to large companies. GitHub also said the program has expanded to 103 regions, added organization-funded sponsorships in 2023, partnered with Patreon, and introduced bulk sponsorships and invoice payments to make recurring support easier for companies.

The pace appears to be accelerating. According to GitHub, the first $10 million took nearly two years, while the most recent $10 million took five months. The company also said that in 2022, nearly 40% of sponsorship funding came from organizations, and an average organization-funded sponsorship was almost 15 times larger than an average individual sponsorship.

For maintainers, the milestone matters less as a single headline number than as evidence that direct funding has become a more normal part of open source operations. GitHub still frames the gap as unresolved, warning that many critical projects remain underfunded and that maintainer burnout remains a supply-chain risk. But the $100 million mark gives developers and companies a visible benchmark for how much direct support is already flowing outside traditional grants, foundations, or commercial support contracts.