Microsoft-owned LinkedIn acquires employee survey firm Glint for $400 mn

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, the social media network for professionals, has acquired employee surveying company Glint for about $400 million.

LinkedIn paid more than $400 million for the deal, according to reports by CNBC and Business Insider. Though the networking platform is yet to disclose the terms of the deal, the transaction has been priced at over $500 million, people in the know told both publications.

Last year in November, Glint, as part of its Series D investment round, had raised $20 million at a valuation of $220 million. "Our insights into people success, along with LinkedIn's insights into the broader workforce, will be a powerful combination that can help customers attract, develop and retain the best talent," Jim Barnett, Glint’s chief executive and co-founder, was quoted as saying in his blog post.

As part of the deal, Barnett will report to Daniel Shapero, head of talent and learning products at LinkedIn. Glint will function as a team within LinkedIn and all its employees will continue to work under Barnett’s leadership, except the human resources, finance, information security and legal departments, who will join the functional teams at LinkedIn, Shapero wrote in a blog post.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2019.

The company, which is based out of Redwood in California, specialises in employee surveys to understand more about a company's management, salary and other issues. It has around 200 employees and its clientele includes Alphabet's Waymo, Dish Network and United Airlines.

Microsoft’s acquisitions

Microsoft acquired LinkedIn Corp for $26.2 billion in June 2016. Its other big acquisitions include Nokia smartphones, Yammer and GitHub.

In June this year, Microsoft bought coding website GitHub Inc for $7.5 billion to boost its cloud computing business and expand clout among software developers. GitHub supplies coding tools for developers and calls itself the world's largest code host with more than 28 million developers using its platform.

After the deal closes, GitHub is expected to become a part of Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud unit.