March 7 (Reuters) - LinkedIn on Thursday for the first

time disclosed sales for its premium subscription business,

saying the unit hit $1.7 billion in revenue in 2023 as the

company sees an uptick in adoption of new artificial

intelligence tools.

LinkedIn, the social network aimed at business

professionals, has not broken out its full financial performance

since it was acquired by Microsoft ( MSFT ) in 2016. The company

has previously disclosed that it made $15 billion in fiscal

2023, with $7 billion of that coming from hiring software that

it sells to corporate recruiters.

But over the past year, LinkedIn has been working to expand

its premium subscription business, which is used by job seekers

and other individual users and starts at $39.99 per month.

A major part of that effort was the addition last year of AI

features such as the ability to scan a job posting and, based on

a job seeker's resume, automatically determine if the seeker

might be a good fit. The AI system can also help job seekers

tweak their LinkedIn profile to make them more appealing to

recruiters and can automatically generate written messages to

send to recruiters.

In an interview, Dan Shapero, LinkedIn's chief operating

officer, said the number of LinkedIn premium subscribers rose

25% in 2023, though the company did not give an absolute figure.

Shapero said that LinkedIn's early data shows that 70% of

subscribers with access to the new AI tools have tried them, and

90% of those found them useful. While the labor market remains

tight in the U.S., that dynamic is uneven across industries and

LinkedIn data shows there are still two applicants for every

job.

"What we do know is that because of the uncertainty in the

broader economy, there are people that are trying to make sure

that they have the ability to get the best job that they can and

that they're excited about," Shapero said.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco)