Professional networking website LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) will acquire technology group Bright for $120 million.

Bright, headquartered in San Francisco, uses data to connect prospective employees to employers. The company, which was founded in 2011, received $20 million in venture capital funding from Toba Capital and Passport Capital. Bright users will have access to the data on the website through Feb. 28.

“By leveraging Bright's data-driven matching technology, machine-learning algorithms and domain expertise, we can accelerate our efforts and build out the economic graph” says Deep Nishar, senior vice president of products and user experience at LinkedIn. The economic graph is LinkedIn’s plan to digitally map the global economy to identify trends. 

LinkedIn, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., offers its 277 million users access to job postings, articles and interest groups through its website. In April, LinkedIn acquired Pulse, an application that aggregates news stories from more than 750 publishers. 

The buyer raised $221 million in venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and several other firms, before its successful public debut in May 2011. 

The purchase price consists of about 27 percent cash, or about $32.4 million, and 73 percent stock.