Like many online outlets that flourished in the 2010s, Buzzfeed has fallen on hard times in recent years. In 2023, the company shuttered the Pulitzer-winning Buzzfeed News. In late 2024, it sold Hot Ones to help pay off some debt, and 2025 saw layoffs across HuffPost and, days later, an embrace of AI. This doesn’t seem to have helped, according to a new article in The New York Times. Last week, investors were informed that the company was so short on cash that it risked not being a company anymore, in part because of how significantly advertising dollars for online platforms have dried up. So what’s CEO Jonah Peretti’s plan to get the company out of this? More AI, of course.
According to the Times, Peretti hopes that the money the company can raise with the AI products and associated subscriptions will make them less reliant on advertising dollars. So far, these products include three games which come from Buzzfeed’s Branch Office subsidiary, which Peretti says is inspired by Nintendo. The first game, called Conjure, is set to launch today and is described as “a spooky mystery investigated by players who solve clues by uploading photos.” The other two are BF Island, “a chat app for inside jokes with friends,” and Quiz Party, “a community for co-creating and sharing BuzzFeed’s popular quizzes.” TechCrunch shared a preview of these products a few days ago out of SXSW. In both articles, Peretti emphasized that the apps are meant to encourage human connection.
The Times article certainly makes it seem like these are moves born out of desperation. The company lost $10.9 million last year and carries $58.4 million in debt, though advertising revenue rose a bit last quarter. Peretti’s positive framing of the situation is that Buzzfeed was once in this situation before it blew up in the 2010 and says he’s going back into “founder mode” and will operate like a start-up again. “I feel like we’re back in that spot again where people have completely given up on digital media,” says Peretti, which could be “an amazing opportunity.”
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