Acquihire

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /əkˈhaɪɚ/

Definitions

1. The acquisition of a business mainly to gain its talented workforce involves strategies centered around human capital rather than physical assets
2. A business tactic focused on purchasing a company to inherit its skilled personnel emphasizes workforce gain over conventional ownership
3. The purchase of a company primarily to secure its skilled team members rather than its products or services

Etymology: Google's 2005 purchase of Dodgeball.com was the moment this term was born, though the company was bought for its people rather than its product. Blogger Rex Hammock coined the word that year as "acqhire," a blend of "acquire" and "hire," and he spent the following years promoting it. Hammock's spelling was not fixed at first. The awkward sound of "ak-hire" led writers to try longer variants, so the form settled only gradually. The idea behind the word is that the buyer's real interest lies in a team's skills rather than its assets. Acquiring a company is ordinarily about its products, customers or equipment, but an acquihire treats the staff as the valuable part, which is why the term sits so comfortably in discussions of human capital. Linguist Ben Zimmer later traced its emergence in a 2010 column, documenting how the blend moved from a single blog post into wider business use.

Synonyms: acquisition, buyout, hire, takeover