acquihire
UK/əkˈhaɪə//əkˈhaɪɚ/
acquihire verb: to acquire a company, in particular a small startup, to recruit its employees, rather than for its products or services.
Verb
acquihire (third-person singular simple present acquihires, present participle acquihiring, simple past and past participle acquihired)
- To acquire a company, in particular a small startup, to recruit its employees, rather than for its products or services.
- “Tarek was an acquihired founder like you. He turned out to be so awesome, I made him co-head of one of Phluttr's biggest projects! But that's rare. I usually look to guys like you and him to start something new. You're entrepreneurs, after all![…]”2017, Rob Reid, After On, Del Rey, →ISBN
Noun
acquihire (plural acquihires)
- An acquisition of a company to recruit its employees, rather than for its products or services.
- Then, in August, they bought Push Pop press, which was seen as an acquihire of designers Kimon Tsinteris and Mike Matas, who designed several of key pieces of the iPhone interface.2013 May 2, Alexis C. Madrigal, “How Facebook Designs the 'Perfect Empty Vessel' for Your Mind”, in The Atlantic
- There are a lot of really excellent founders pursuing consumer ideas that just never work -- that's why companies like Yahoo and Google and others can do so many acquihires.2013 October 11, Marc Andreessen (as pmarca), “Weary of ‘Fruit Fly’ Consumer Startups, Andreessen Horowitz Raises Series A Bar”, in Hacker News, comment
Forms of acquihire
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | acquihires |
| present participle | acquihiring |
| past participle | acquihired |
| past | acquihired |
| alternative form | acqhire |
| alternative form | acq-hire |
| alternative form | acquhire |
| alternative form | acqu-hire |
| alternative form | acqui-hire |
| Noun | |
| plural | acquihires |
Origin of acquihire
Coined by Rex Hammock in 2005 as acqhire, blend of acquire + hire, in reference to acquisition of Dodgeball.com by Google. Hammock subsequently worked to popularize the word. Spelling inconsistent, particularly to difficulty in pronunciation (/ak-hire/), leading to longer variants.
Questions about acquihire
- What does acquihire mean?
- Acquihire means to acquire a company, in particular a small startup, to recruit its employees, rather than for its products or services.
- What part of speech is acquihire?
- Acquihire can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce acquihire?
- Acquihire is pronounced /əkˈhaɪɚ/ (US).
- What is the past tense of acquihire?
- The past tense of acquihire is acquihired.
Words near acquihire in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: acquihire (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sapaa-acquihire.wav.
Cite this entry: “acquihire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/acquihire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.