Microsoft’s relationship with LinkedIn began with a landmark acquisition in 2016, when Microsoft announced it would buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. This deal – Microsoft’s largest ever at the time – was driven by CEO Satya Nadella’s vision of combining Microsoft’s productivity software with LinkedIn’s vast professional network. The acquisition officially closed in December 2016, bringing LinkedIn’s then 433 million members under Microsoft’s umbrella. Nadella highlighted a shared mission: “to connect the world’s professionals” and improve how people work. Analysts saw the move as a “massive growth play” for Microsoft, aiming to add new sales, marketing, and recruiting services to Microsoft’s product suite and challenge competitors in the cloud software space. At that time, LinkedIn was already a powerhouse for hiring solutions – making most of its ~$3 billion annual revenue from recruiters and job seekers paying for networking and recruiting tools. Integrating this “social network for business” into Microsoft promised to unlock synergies in data analytics and AI, given both companies’ rich stores of professional data.