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LinkedIn

Website:

www.linkedin.com/%20
Location:

Sunnyvale, CA
Formation:

2002
Chief Executive Officer:

Ryan Roslansky
Type:

For-profit Company

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LinkedIn is a for-profit social networking company focused on professional and business development. The company was founded in 2002 by former PayPal executive Reid Hoffman, grew rapidly in the 2000s, made an initial public offering in 2011, and was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 for $26.2 billion. In 2024, LinkedIn generated $17.1 billion with a claimed 1 billion members and 70 million business accounts. 1

History

LinkedIn was initially started by ex-PayPal executive Reid Hoffman, who claimed he was inspired by friendship-based social network Friendster and dating-based network Match.com to build a business-based social network. Hoffman recruited Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, and Allen Blue to start working on the company in 2002. The team pushed to engage in what they called an $8 billion market for job hunting and recruitment through classified ads, online job boards, and headhunting companies. 2 3

LinkedIn officially launched in May 2003. In November 2023, LinkedIn received a $4.7 million Series A investment from Sequoia Capital. By that point, 20,000 hiring managers had signed up for LinkedIn. By December, LinkedIn had reached 100,000 members. 2 3

In March 2004, LinkedIn reached 500,000 members. In May, LinkedIn first attempted to monetize its website through a paid premium subscription. Soon after, LinkedIn began permitting employers to advertise on the website. In December, LinkedIn reached 1 million members. In 2005, LinkedIn reached 6 million users. 3

In 2006 and 2007, LinkedIn expanded towards providing job recommendations, LinkedIn Answers, and a LinkedIn mobile app. In 2008, Bain Capital made a $53 million investment in LinkedIn that valued the company at $1 billion. 4 By 2009, LinkedIn had reached 50 million members. In 2010, LinkedIn earned $243 million. 3

In 2011, LinkedIn issued an initial public offering (IPO) with a valuation of $11 billion. In 2015, LinkedIn spent $1.5 billion to acquire Lynda, an online professional development company. 3

In 2016, LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion.. 3

In 2020, LinkedIn reached a claimed 722 million users. By 2021, LinkedIn was earning $10.3 billion in revenue. 3

2016 Russia Ban

In 2015, the Russian government passed a law prohibiting all online companies operating in the country from storing data on Russian citizens outside Russia. In 2016, LinkedIn was banned from Russia for allegedly failing to comply with the law. A report by Human Rights Watch claimed the legislation was enforced primarily against LinkedIn compared to other foreign companies that operated in the country despite allegedly breaking said law. The report also claimed the targeting of LinkedIn was part of an “intimidation campaign against Facebook and, first and foremost, Google.” 5

Activities

Artificial Intelligence and Data Collection

In January 2025, a group of American LinkedIn Premium users sued LinkedIn over allegations that their private messages were used to train the company’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems without sufficient consent. LinkedIn began using the data in August 2024 without notifying users except by introducing a new privacy setting permitting users to opt out. As of October 2025, the lawsuit seeks $1,000 per user in damages while LinkedIn has denied all wrongdoing. 6

In 2024, LinkedIn ended the practice of using data from United Kingdom users to train its AI systems after a complaint was lodged by the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office. 7 That same year, a report by Wired alleged that over 54 percent of longer posts on LinkedIn were written partially or entirely by AI writing tools provided by LinkedIn. 8

In 2017, LinkedIn sent a cease-and-desist letter to hiQ Labs, a for-profit corporation that analyzes public data to monitor customer and business trends, to stop the company from using public LinkedIn data. LinkedIn claimed that using such data violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. hiQ Labs later sued LinkedIn. According to an analysis by law firm Morgan Lewis, the court’s decision “has no precedential value,” but past decisions in the lawsuit indicate that public data scraping for business purposes is legal in some contexts but not others. 9

In 2013, a class action lawsuit was filed against LinkedIn due to the company sending out mass emails using contacts imported from user email accounts. The plaintiffs claimed that LinkedIn had improperly gained access to email contact lists, but LinkedIn claimed that the website’s user agreements permitted LinkedIn access. In 2015, LinkedIn settled the lawsuit with a $13 million payment, with an additional $3.25 million legal fee payment. 10 11

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Policies

In January 2025, LinkedIn removed the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) page from its website in favor of a page titled, “Belonging.” 12

As of October 2025, LinkedIn maintains a DEI page on its “Resources and Support” page. 13

Leadership

Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn was co-founded by Reid Hoffman 2002, and he headed the company as CEO until stepping down in 2016 to became the company’s board chair. As of 2025, he sits on the boards of Neeva, Convoy Inc., Joby Aviation, Blockstream, Entrepreneur First, NAUTO, Aurora, Coda, Village Global, Greylock, Inflection AI, Manas AI, and Microsoft. He is an advisory member of Reinvent Capital and was previously elected as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously a board member for Airbnb, OpenAI, Edmodo, and Xepo Bank.  14 15

Before LinkedIn, Hoffman was an executive vice president at PayPal. Prior to this, he co-founded social networking site Socialnet.com, and worked as a programmer at Fujitsu Software and Apple. 14

In 2013, Hoffman co-founded FWD.us PAC with Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Bill Gates, and Drew Houston. 16 In 2016, Hoffman co-founded Investing in US, a group that has donated to  nonprofits and PACs such as Indivisible, ACRONYM, and Forward Majority Action. 17 According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, as of October 2025, Hoffman has donated roughly $76,438,159.07 to federal candidates and PACs, mostly supportive of Democrats.  18

Ryan Roslansky

Ryan Roslansky is the CEO of LinkedIn as of 2025, joining the company in 2009 as a chief product officer and taking the position of CEO in 2020. In addition, he works as an executive vice president for Microsoft as well as a board member of Intuit.  19 20

References

  1. Tafradzhiyski, Nayden. “LinkedIn Usage and Revenue Statistics (2025).” Business of Apps. Updated September 2, 2025. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/linkedin-statistics/.
  2. “Sequoia Capital “Links In” with $4.7 Million Investment.” LinkedIn. November 12, 2003. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://news.linkedin.com/2003/11/sequoia-capital-links-in-with-47-million-investment.
  3. Antila, Mikko. “The History of LinkedIn, all those things you wanted to know… -What made it happen?.” LinkedIn. March 3, 2025. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/history-linkedin-all-those-things-you-wanted-know-what-mikko-antila-8ht7f/.
  4. Guynn, Jessica. “Investors value LinkedIn at $1 billion.” Los Angeles Times. June 18, 2008. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jun-18-fi-linkedin18-story.html.
  5. “Online and On All Fronts.” Human Rights Watch. July 18, 2017. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/07/18/online-and-all-fronts/russias-assault-freedom-expression#.
  6. Silva, Joao da. “LinkedIn accused of using private messages to train AI.” BBC. January 22, 2025. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxevpzy3yko.
  7. “LinkedIn suspends AI training using UK user data.” BBC. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20240922073008/https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy89x4y1pmgo.
  8. Knibbs, Kate. “Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated.” Wired. November 26, 2024. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/linkedin-ai-generated-influencers/.
  9. “LinkedIn v. hiQ: Landmark Data Scraping Suit Provides Guidance to Data Scrapers and Web Operators.” Morgan Lewis. December 22, 2022. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.morganlewis.com/blogs/sourcingatmorganlewis/2022/12/linkedin-v-hiq-landmark-data-scraping-suit-provides-guidance-to-data-scrapers-and-web-operators.
  10. Goldman, Eric. “The Perkins v. LinkedIn Class Action Settlement Notification Was Badly Bungled.” Forbes. October 3, 2015. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2015/10/03/the-perkins-v-linkedin-class-action-settlement-notification-was-badly-bungled/.
  11. Lee, Seung. “LinkedIn to Pay $13 million in Suit Settlement for Excessively Spamming Users.” Newsweek. October 5, 2013. Updated April 23, 2016. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/linkedin-13-million-class-action-lawsuit-emails-379975.
  12. O’Loughlin, Henry. “LinkedIn Deleted Its DEI Page, Now ‘Belonging’.” Build Remote. March 10, 2025. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://buildremote.co/dei/linkedin/.
  13. “Diversity, equity & inclusion.” LinkedIn. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/resources/hr-glossary/diversity-equity-inclusion.
  14. “Reid Hoffman.” LinkedIn. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/.
  15. “Membership Roster.” Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.cfr.org/membership/roster.
  16. “Meet Our Founders.” FWD.US. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www.fwd.us/founders/.
  17. Melhorn, Dmitri. “Investing in Us.” Medium. December 21, 2018. Accessed March 18, 2021. https://medium.com/@DmitriMehlhorn/investing-in-us-64afe222face.
  18. “FEC search: Reid Hoffman.” FEC. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=Reid+Hoffman.
  19. “Ryan Roslansky.” LinkedIn. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanroslansky/.
  20. Simons, John. “Gen Z and Millennials Are Leading a ‘Great Reshuffle.’ Here’s What That Means.” Time. October 17, 2021. Accessed October 16, 2025. https://time.com/6107587/linkedin-ceo-ryan-rolansky-interview/.
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