LinkedIn just nuked Seamless.AI and Apollo.io's company pages.
This isn't just routine enforcement. This is the opening move in a battle that will reshape how B2B sales and marketing operate for years to come.
If you've been living under a rock, LinkedIn has finally done what we all knew was coming: they're cracking down on the tools scraping data outside their terms of service. Seamless.AI and Apollo.io are the first casualties in what promises to be a bloody battle for control of professional data.
Let's be honest. We all saw this coming. If you didn’t see this coming then you either didn’t care enough to pay attention or you live in a land of bliss we should all strive for.
There are businesses built on the back of every movement and ecosystem. Much like barnacles on a whale, smaller companies cling to these ecosystems and build thriving businesses serving unmet needs.
But LinkedIn's relationship with data scrapers was never truly symbiotic. These weren't cute little barnacles providing a service. They were parasites fueled by VC funding. The whale never consented to this arrangement; it was just biding its time.
Let's cut through the PR spin and call it what it was. Here's what these platforms were really doing:
Companies using these platforms saved thousands on Sales Navigator licenses while building million-dollar pipelines. But as your grandmother probably told you, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Especially when that lunch belongs to a company backed by Microsoft.
LinkedIn isn't just protecting user privacy out of the goodness of their heart. They're eliminating competition. By removing these platforms, LinkedIn positions itself as the only legitimate source of professional data.
Let's state the obvious:
With this backdrop, the only thing that is surprising is that it took LinkedIn this long to make this statement. Microsoft didn't spend $26 billion to watch other companies profit from their data lake. This isn't some spontaneous policy enforcement. It's a calculated power move years in the making.
The writing has been on the wall since the HiQ Labs lawsuit in 2017, yet the entire sales tech ecosystem kept building on borrowed time and borrowed data. LinkedIn showed remarkable restraint while hundreds of millions in venture capital poured into companies whose entire business models violated their terms of service.
Let's not pretend that Apollo and Seamless.AI are the only data grifters in town. Open LinkedIn and you'll see non-stop promotions from B2B household names: ZoomInfo, Clearbit, Lusha, Cognism, Clay. They're all selling the dream that their data is somehow magically compliant with LinkedIn's policies. Some actually are compliant. To them, we say, “well done…for now”.
The volume of panic and virtue-signaling is amplifying by the hour. Every sales tech CEO is suddenly an expert on LinkedIn's terms of service (which, conveniently, they've been ignoring for years).
What your options sound like if you’re in their shoes:
We see three potential outcomes:
Regardless of your data strategy, it's impossible to refute that data is gold in B2B. Billions in enterprise value have been amassed by creating, aggregating, and understanding this data. Here's what LinkedIn's power play means for your business:
Let's call this what it is. LinkedIn is executing the most aggressive land grab in B2B SaaS history. We're watching the professional network transform into the Death Star of revenue tech before our eyes.
Think about it. Microsoft didn't pay $26B for a glorified resume database. They bought the most comprehensive professional graph on the planet and they're weaponizing it. LinkedIn isn't just a professional network anymore. It's becoming the central nervous system of modern B2B go-to-market:
What's next? A LinkedIn CRM? A LinkedIn sales engagement platform? A fresh take on AI GTM? Don't laugh. The pieces are already there. Microsoft's entire business strategy revolves around owning workflows, and sales is the last frontier they haven't conquered.
As a GTM leader, it’s important to brace for the Great Budget Migration. As LinkedIn tightens its grip, every GTM leader will face an impossible choice: pay the LinkedIn tax or become irrelevant. Smart teams are already building LinkedIn-proof prospecting methods and first-party data moats before it's too late.
Remember when ZoomInfo went public at a $8B valuation in 2020? That was just the beginning of the B2B data gold rush. With LinkedIn squeezing out the scrappy upstarts, we're looking at an inevitable oligopoly where a few major players control access to professional data.
The economic consequences are predictable and brutal. Fewer providers mean higher prices, and the remaining players (mostly public companies with hungry shareholders) know it. The era of affordable B2B data is ending faster than free beer at a tech conference.
Your CAC calculations just went out the window. Companies building GTM motions around cheap data access are about to face a rude awakening. It is time to dust off those inbound playbooks and invest in quality over quantity. The spray-and-pray approach to outbound is officially dead. This might be a good thing for everyone except your sales development reps.
The entire sales tech ecosystem has been coexisting in a delicate balance, with LinkedIn as the whale. Now that whale is fed up and the ramifications are just beginning.
Sales engagement platforms and AI GTM Bots built on easy access to LinkedIn data are frantically rewriting their product roadmaps. Apollo alternatives are being coded in basements as we speak. The great sales stack reconfiguration of 2025 is underway.
Your beautifully integrated sales tech stack is about to fracture. The tools that survive will be the ones that pivot to LinkedIn-approved workflows or build truly independent data sources. Expect to run parallel processes. One native to LinkedIn and another outside of it. The days of seamless integration between your CRM and LinkedIn are ending, and with them, the efficiency gains we've all taken for granted.
The future of B2B data isn't exactly utopian, but it's not apocalyptic either. Those who adapt fastest will thrive. And those who keep pretending LinkedIn won't notice their data scraping? Well, they'll be writing panicked LinkedIn posts about their suspended accounts only to realize a cruel irony. They have nowhere to post them. Like a tree falling in a forest with no one there to hear it. Their outrage will echo into the void.