LinkedIn shifts toward AI leadership

LinkedIn put Dan Shapero in the chief executive job on April 22, handing day-to-day control of the professional network to a longtime insider as Microsoft ties it closer to its workplace AI push. (cnbc.com) Shapero had been LinkedIn’s chief operating officer since 2021 and joined the company in 2008, when he was roughly its 300th employee. The change took effect immediately. (geekwire.com) Ryan Roslansky, who had run LinkedIn since 2020, is staying at Microsoft as executive vice president and now oversees both LinkedIn and Microsoft Office. Shapero and newly elevated engineering leader Mohak Shroff both report to him. (cnbc.com) Microsoft has been reorganizing around business AI tools, not just consumer chatbots. Roslansky wrote that Satya Nadella asked him last year to lead LinkedIn and Office because Microsoft expected AI to reshape how people work and build careers. (geekwire.com) That puts LinkedIn’s identity graph — the profiles, work histories, skills lists, and company pages tied to real names — closer to the software Microsoft sells to employers. Roslansky’s Office remit includes Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft 365 Copilot. (geekwire.com) LinkedIn is not a side business inside Microsoft. In Microsoft’s fiscal second quarter, reported January 28, LinkedIn revenue rose 11% year over year as Microsoft said demand stayed strong across its business software portfolio. (microsoft.com) The scale is larger than its old reputation as an online résumé site suggests. Under Roslansky, membership grew to 1.3 billion, up from about 700 million when he took over, and GeekWire reported LinkedIn had crossed $5 billion in quarterly revenue. (cnbc.com) (geekwire.com) Microsoft and LinkedIn have already been building AI into recruiting and career tools. LinkedIn rolled out AI writing help for user profiles and recruiter job descriptions in 2023, then introduced Hiring Assistant in October 2024 as its first AI agent for recruiters. (techcrunch.com 1) (techcrunch.com 2) Shapero framed the handoff around labor-market change, writing that LinkedIn’s role grows as “the world is transformed by AI” and workers adapt. Roslansky described him as the executive who had already led sales, marketing, and product across the company’s core businesses. (cnbc.com) The practical effect is that LinkedIn now sits even nearer the center of Microsoft’s pitch to employers: one system for identity, hiring, productivity software, and AI assistance. For users, the profile on the site may matter less as a public calling card alone and more as a data layer inside the tools companies use to recruit, write, learn, and manage work. (geekwire.com) (cnbc.com)