Private company

Drawbridge

Drawbridge is a people-based identity management company operating out of San Mateo, California, USA. It has been a subsidiary of LinkedIn since 2019. Drawbridge has built a people-based identity graph and cross-device advertising platform that specializes in using machine learning to match individuals across connected devices, including desktops, smartphones, tablets, and connected TVs, in order to serve more relevant ads across devices.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Nov 1, 2010Founded1

Drawbridge is a people-based identity management company operating out of San Mateo, California, USA. It has been a subsidiary of LinkedIn since 2019. Drawbridge has built a people-based identity graph and cross-device advertising platform that specializes in using machine learning to match individuals across connected devices, including desktops, smartphones, tablets, and connected TVs, in order to serve more relevant ads across devices.2

The story

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, a former AdMob scientist, built the technology that allowed her to pair users to devices in late 2010 and formed Adsymptotic, which is now known as Drawbridge. In 2014, the company announced support for video ads and updated its analytics suite to give marketers insights on multi-touch attribution and information on their audiences across devices.

In 2016, the company was ranked #54 on the Deloitte Fast 500 North America list and was listed on the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies in America for the second consecutive year.

In 2017, the company was ranked #24 on the CNBC Disruptor 50 list, and named one of Fortune’s "50 Companies Leading the AI Revolution." It was also reported that 32% of technical roles and 43% of leadership roles (director or higher) at Drawbridge were filled by women.

In 2018, Drawbridge sold its media business to Gimbal and was again named a CNBC Disruptor.

In 2019, Drawbridge was acquired by LinkedIn

From Wikipedia’s article on Drawbridge (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Products and brands

At a high level, Drawbridge probabilistically determines whether two devices are used by the same person by analyzing various events occurring on the devices and the attributes that those events yield.

In other words, Drawbridge observes a user's activities, primarily through the proxy of ads served to various devices (mobile device or desktop web), which gives them an ID. Since IDs are different across all the devices a user may interact with, Drawbridge then computes a confidence-score based on the likelihood that IDs from different sources belong to the same person or identity.

From Wikipedia’s article on Drawbridge (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. Nov 1, 2010Founded Founded1

Sources

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