By Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 (Reuters) - LinkedIn, the social network for professionals owned by Microsoft, on Wednesday said that its hiring products using what is known as agentic AI are on track to generate $450 million in sales in the coming year.
The sales disclosure for a core AI product is new for LinkedIn, which has 1 billion members and makes much of its revenue from selling tools to sales and recruiting professionals. While Microsoft reports LinkedIn's overall sales growth as part
of its productivity and business process operating unit, it does not disclose absolute dollar figures for the network.
LinkedIn has launched two primary agentic AI products for recruiters, one for large businesses and one for small businesses. The systems work by having an AI agent take instructions from a human recruiter to understand what the recruiter is seeking and then sift through LinkedIn profiles to find the best ones for follow-up by the human recruiter.
LinkedIn said the products, some of which were in testing for nearly a year before release, are helping recruiters save time and get higher response rates when contacting potential hires.
"Recruiters told us half their day was low-value work, so we made a bet on understanding their pain to get our solution right," Dan Shapero, LinkedIn’s new CEO who took over last week, told Reuters in a statement. "That focus on the customer, not racing to launch an AI agent, was the right one and hitting this milestone shows it."
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
