acquihire
n. The purchase of a company for the skills and talents of its employees rather than for its products or other assets.
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2014
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the pieces fit together like that of a smaller purchase/acquihire: the Directr product will live on (now free) under its own branding, but the team behind it is joining YouTube’s video ad team.
—Greg Kumparak, “Google Acquires Directr, An App For Shooting Short Films On Your Phone,” TechCrunch, August 06, 2014
2014
Apple has kept the stakes low in recent years. Several of the companies it has bought had as few as one or two people, like SnappyLabs, a one-man developer of a camera app. The founder, John Papandriopoulos, an electrical engineer, had developed an app to make the iPhone’s camera take high-resolution photos at a faster frame rate than Apple’s built-in camera software. Apple bought the company this year and made Mr. Papandriopoulos a software engineer.

These tiny acquisitions, made in large part to add the skills of an individual as much as the company, are known as acquihires in Silicon Valley.
—Brian X. Chen, “For Hints at Apple’s Plans, Read Its Shopping List,” The New York Times, February 23, 2014
2005 (earliest)
Acqhire — When a large company "purchases" a small company with no employees other than its founders, typically to obtain some special talent or a cool concept.
—Rex Hammock, “Google acquires(?) Dodgeball.com,” RexBlog.com, May 11, 2005
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