By our arithmetic, LinkedIn’s $4.71 billion of revenue in the quarter to September 2025 was about 43.5% of the $10.84 billion that Microsoft’s Form 10-Q, filed on 28 October 2026, now reports for that quarter in the two lines LinkedIn has been moved into: Search and advertising and Industry solutions.
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The key insight: Microsoft’s 10-Q now reports LinkedIn inside two lines, Search and advertising and Industry solutions; by our arithmetic, LinkedIn was about 43.5% of their combined revenue in the quarter to September 2025, and the filing gives no LinkedIn split for the latest quarter.
Microsoft’s 2 September 2026 recast filing said “LinkedIn Talent Solutions and Sales Solutions will now be reported in the Industry solutions cloudrevenuegrowth metric”, and “LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions will now be reported in the Search and advertising revenue (ex TAC) growth metric”.
The 10-Q describes the two lines. Industry solutions includes “Industry solutions cloud, comprising LinkedIn Talent Solutions and Sales Solutions, Dynamics 365” and Healthcare and Life Sciences cloud. Search and advertising includes “Bing, Microsoft Edge, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions, third-party affiliates, and MSN”.
So LinkedIn’s recruiting and sales tools now sit with Dynamics 365, and its ads and paid memberships sit with Bing, Edge and MSN.
LinkedIn revenue as a share of Microsoft’s Search and advertising and Industry solutions revenue in the quarter to September 2025 (our arithmetic), and the two lines’ revenue in the quarter to September 2026, for which Microsoft gave no LinkedIn split. Sources: Microsoft 10-Q (28 Oct 2026), 8-K Exhibit 99.1 (2 Sep 2026).
LinkedIn’s Weight Inside the Two Lines
The 10-Q restates the year-earlier quarter on the new basis: Search and advertising $5.94 billion and Industry solutions $4.89 billion, $10.84 billion together. Microsoft’s recast table put LinkedIn revenue for the same quarter at $4.71 billion.
Dividing one by the other gives LinkedIn about 43.5% of the two lines a year ago, by our arithmetic. The rest, about $6.12 billion, was Bing, Edge, MSN, Dynamics 365, healthcare cloud and the other products the two lines include.
Microsoft does not split the two lines between LinkedIn and the rest, so the 43.5% share applies only to that quarter.
What the Two Lines Show This Quarter
In the quarter to September 2026, the 10-Q says “Search and advertising revenue increased $612 million or 10%”, to $6.55 billion, and that the line excluding traffic acquisition costs “increased 12% driven by higher rate and volume across LinkedIn, Edge, and Bing”.
It says “Industry solutions revenue increased $443 million or 9% driven by growth in Industry solutions cloud”, to $5.34 billion, and that “Industry solutions cloudrevenue increased 10% with growth in Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Talent Solutions”. Together the two lines held $11.89 billion.
Industry solutions cloud also counts toward Microsoft’s headline cloud figure. The 10-Q says “Our Microsoft Cloud revenue, which includes Azure, Microsoft 365 commercial cloud, and Industry solutions cloud” was $63.9 billion, against $49.1 billion a year earlier.
What the Recast Shows and What It Leaves Out
The new lines show LinkedIn by name as a driver of growth in both, but give no LinkedIn dollar figure or growth rate.
Microsoft’s outlook of 29 July, repeated in the 2 September filing, called for “LinkedIn revenue Growth in high-single digits” this quarter. The 10-Q gives no LinkedIn number to check it against.
Microsoft’s fiscal 2026 10-K was the last annual report with the full LinkedIn figure: “LinkedIn revenue increased $2.0 billion or 11% with growth across all lines of business”, to $19.8 billion.
As we read the filings, LinkedIn’s four businesses were split between the two lines: recruiting and sales tools went with Dynamics 365 into Industry solutions, and ads and paid memberships went with Bing, Edge and MSN into Search and advertising.
The 10-Q names LinkedIn as a driver in both lines: Industry solutions cloud grew 10% “with growth in Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Talent Solutions”, and search and advertising excluding traffic acquisition costs grew 12% on rate and volume “across LinkedIn, Edge, and Bing”.
As we read the 10-Q, Industry solutions cloud, which now holds LinkedIn’s Talent and Sales Solutions, is one of the three parts of the Microsoft Cloud figure, which the filing puts at $63.9 billion for the quarter.
Microsoft Form 10-Q, 28 October 2026
“Search and advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 12% driven by higher rate and volume across LinkedIn, Edge, and Bing”
Three Implications
FOR INVESTORS Microsoft’s 10-Q gives no LinkedIn revenue for the quarter; the closest reported figures are the two lines, $6.55 billion for Search and advertising and $5.34 billion for Industry solutions.
FOR ANALYSTS By our arithmetic, LinkedIn was about 43.5% of the two lines a year earlier, so growth in either line combines LinkedIn with Bing, Edge, MSN, Dynamics 365 and healthcare cloud.
FOR LINKEDIN ADVERTISERS AND RECRUITERS Microsoft now reports LinkedIn’s ads and paid memberships with Bing and Edge, and its recruiting and sales tools with Dynamics 365.
The framework says that “In the embedding era, value comes from what the software connects to”.
Microsoft’s 10-Q now reports LinkedIn’s recruiting and sales tools alongside Dynamics 365 and its ads alongside Bing and Edge. The framework does not discuss Microsoft or LinkedIn.
What Is Not Established
Microsoft does not report how much of either line is LinkedIn in the quarter to September 2026, so LinkedIn’s share of the $11.89 billion is not known from its filings. The 43.5% is our arithmetic for the year-earlier quarter only.
The year-earlier figures for the two lines are as restated in the 10-Q, and LinkedIn’s $4.71 billion is from the recast table; Microsoft did not publish the share itself. Whether LinkedIn met the high-single-digit outlook is not stated in the 10-Q.
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Microsoft’s 10-Q places LinkedIn’s recruiting and sales tools in Industry solutions and its ads and paid memberships in Search and advertising. A year earlier LinkedIn made up about 43.5% of those two lines, by our arithmetic; this quarter the 10-Q names LinkedIn as a growth driver in both without giving its revenue.
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A note on sourcing. Figures come from Microsoft’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, its 2 September 2026 Form 8-K recast (Exhibit 99.1) and its fiscal 2026 Form 10-K. LinkedIn’s share of the two lines, their combined totals and the remainder are our arithmetic; linked earlier pieces carry their own sources.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
