Microsoft owns the Azure cloud platform and acquired LinkedIn in 2016.
Microsoft announced its acquisition of LinkedIn in June 2016 and completed the transaction later that year for approximately $26.2 billion. LinkedIn remained a separate professional-networking service, while the acquisition added a major business-focused platform to Microsoft’s portfolio.
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform, providing computing, storage, databases, analytics, networking, and artificial-intelligence services. It competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Azure’s growth has been a major reason Microsoft developed from a personal-computer software company into a broad enterprise technology company.
The two assets serve different roles: LinkedIn is a professional social network and business-services platform, while Azure supplies technical infrastructure and software services. Both contribute to Microsoft’s diversified business model, which also includes Windows, Office, Xbox, search, and hardware.