LinkedIn is marking its first acquisition since becoming part of Microsoft Corp. in 2016.

The business social network today announced plans to purchase Glint Inc., a Redwood City, California-based startup focused on providing enterprises with insight into employee sentiment. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Glint raised nearly $80 million from funding prior to the acquisition, which strongly suggests that the price tag is in the nine figures. Some sources told CNBC and others that the price was as high as $500 million.

The startup’s namesake offering is a souped-up employee polling platform with artificial intelligence and analytics features. Human resource departments can use Glint to survey workers about various subjects such as their satisfaction with workplace culture. Once the results are in, the algorithms behind the scenes turn the data into sleek dashboards that provide a visual overview.

Glint distills poll responses into an aggregate score that enables users to view the most important information at a glance. In the same interface, the platform also shows granular data about how employee opinion changes across departments and other lower-level details. Users have several different options for slicing and dicing the data depending on what insights they’re looking to glean.

Alongside the analytics features, Glint provides an alerting mechanism for keeping track of changes. Decision-makers can have the platform notify them when there’s a sudden increase in employee attrition at a certain business unit or some other development that requires special attention.

LinkedIn, itself a Glint customer, reportedly plans to continue offering the service. But the other organizations that rely on it can probably expect some changes. Daniel Shapero, the social network’s vice president of talent solutions, careers and learning, hinted in a blog post that Glint could be integrated with LinkedIn’s online training services.

“Now imagine, through our combined offerings, that we can translate the specific feedback a manager gets from their employees on Glint into a personalized LinkedIn Learning experience focused on the topics that will help them improve, thus making the feedback much more actionable,” Shapero wrote.

After the acquisition closes, Glint will continue operating under the leadership of founder and current Chief Executive Officer Jim Barnett as part of Shapero’s division. The Microsoft subsidiary expects to wrap up the organizational integration process in 12 to 18 months.

Image: LinkedIn