Episode 14: LinkedIn

**Ben Gilbert** (0:06)
We'll cut that. Welcome to episode 14 of Acquired, the podcast where we talk about technology acquisitions that actually went well. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:31)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:32)
And we are your hosts. We have a very special episode for you today. I can't really think of a time when I didn't call it a very special episode.

**David Rosenthal** (0:40)
Every episode is special, Ben.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:41)
It's true. This episode is not necessarily about a technology acquisition that actually went well. We have no idea how it went. It is huge and it is recent. Today, we are talking about LinkedIn being acquired by Microsoft two days ago, at the time of recording. It's super speculative, but I think the whole internet is sort of a buzz with what's the deal with this acquisition, why did they do it, what's the future hold. I think it's going to be super interesting to speculate a little bit and throw out some possible paths and draw some conclusions.

**David Rosenthal** (1:18)
Yeah, we're going to have some fun with this. I don't think we've ever gotten as many requests on Slack and email and other channels for, please talk about LinkedIn. So here we are.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:30)
And in fact, I think this may change the timbre of what this show is about. I think at some point here, we might rename this to just a show about tech acquisitions because we're doing things that didn't go well, things that didn't go well. Really anything that's got a good story.

**David Rosenthal** (1:47)
So we love stories here.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:49)
We do. This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.

**David Rosenthal** (1:56)
So Crusoe, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads. NVIDIA is one of their major partners and literally Crusoe's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s. And because Crusoe's cloud is purpose built for AI and run on wasted, stranded or clean energy, they can provide significantly better performance per dollar than traditional cloud providers.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:21)
Yes, we talked about that on our ACQ2 episode with Crusoe's CEO Chase Lockmiller.

**David Rosenthal** (2:27)
The other element that makes Crusoe special is the environmental angle. Crusoe, of course, locates their data centers at stranded energy sites. So think oil flares, wind farms that can't use all the energy they generate, etc. And uses that power that would otherwise be wasted to run your AI workloads instead.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:45)
Yep. Obviously, it's a huge benefit for the environment and for customers on cost since Crusoe doesn't rely on the energy grid. Energy is the second largest cost of running AI after, of course, the price you pay NVIDIA for the chips. And these lower energy costs get passed on to customers.

**David Rosenthal** (3:01)
It's super cool that they can put their data centers out there in these remote locations where quote unquote energy happens, as opposed to the other hyperscalers such as AWS and Google and Azure who need to build their data centers close to major traffic hubs where the internet happens because they are doing everything in their clouds.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:18)
Yep. If you, your company, or your portfolio companies would like to use the lower cost and more performant infrastructure for your AI workloads, go to crusocloud.com/acquired. That's crusoecloud.com/acquired, or click the link in the show notes. A little bit of administrative before we dive in. As usual, I'm going to ask, please review us on iTunes. It makes a huge difference and it's what makes the show grow and tick. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or even LinkedIn.
Please share it on Microsoft LinkedIn whenever you can. For those of you who get some questions, I'm not listening on iTunes or I don't have an Apple device. We're going to post this on Product Hunt. Search for it on Product Hunt. We would love an upvote there.

**David Rosenthal** (4:06)
Yes, please. Thank you, as always. Feel free to join the Slack group.
It's really awesome interacting with all you guys. We've got over 100 people now and great discussion going on. So if you want to spend more time with Ben and David, join the Slack group.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:22)
Yeah. We want to do a little bit of follow-up. There's been some news from our last couple episodes that we think are worth talking about for a minute here. David, you want to talk about Snapchat?

**David Rosenthal** (4:33)
Yeah.
Sometimes we'll have this, sometimes we won't, but adding a section to the show on follow-ups on previous shows. So we'll do this quickly. But first, from Snapchat, big announcement this week as well. Ben Thompson, our favorite oracle here on Acquired, tweeted that the LinkedIn acquisition and WWDC were the second and third most important announcements of the week, and that Snapchat launching their advertising API was the most important announcement of the week. Well, time will tell on that.