LinkedIn Corp.’s stunning $26.2 billion price tag led to speculation that Microsoft may have been caught up in a bidding war in order to acquire the professional networking site. Now, Salesforce.com, Inc. CEO Marc Benioff has admitted that he did indeed make a bid to land for the site for himself.

Bloomberg revealed on Thursday that Salesforce was a “rival potential bidder” for LinkedIn, and Benioff confirmed in a statement to Re/Code that he was involved in negotiations to buy the company.

Bloomberg also said Salesforce was advised by the investment bank Goldman Sachs during negotiations for LinkedIn, though Benioff didn’t comment on this. It’s also not clear how far along negotiations went between Salesforce and LinkedIn. However, Bloomberg’s sources said Microsoft and LinkedIn were already deep into their own negotiations when Salesforce made its own approach, which would have necessitated debt and stock financing. In contrast, Microsoft was able to pay in cash and also promised to let LinkedIn operate independently, factors that may have swayed the deal.

“We gave it a solid look,” Benioff said of his bid for LinkedIn. “We are always looking to help our customers in new ways.”

Microsoft’s interest in LinkedIn goes back a number of years, but the company didn’t approach LinkedIn. Instead, LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner and executive chairman Reid Hoffman alerted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella themselves to tell him they were in talks with another company about a deal.

After announcing the deal, Nadella revealed that one of the main motivations was that LinkedIn could help bolster Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM platform, which competes with Salesforce.

“It helps us differentiate our CRM product with social selling,” Nadella told Business Insider. “It helps us take Dynamics into new spaces like human capital management with recruiting, and learning, and talent management.”

Microsoft now plans to mine LinkedIn’s database to boost its own offerings in everything from sales software to HR software, integrated the site with Office 365, and merge its ad business with its own.

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