Overview of Exclusive: Jonah Peretti explains why he sold BuzzFeed
In this Decoder interview, The Verge’s Nilay Patel talks with BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah Peretti about the company’s sale of a 52% stake to Byron Allen, Peretti’s move from CEO to president of BuzzFeed AI, and what BuzzFeed’s next chapter looks like in an AI-shaped media landscape. The conversation digs into BuzzFeed’s past bets on social distribution, the collapse of platform dependence, the creator economy, and Peretti’s belief that AI can help reinvent both media products and media business models.
The BuzzFeed sale and leadership shake-up
What the deal does
- Byron Allen’s company is buying 52% of BuzzFeed for $120 million.
- BuzzFeed remains a public company, but Allen will effectively control it.
- Peretti is stepping down as CEO and becoming president of BuzzFeed AI.
- The deal brings new capital, gives BuzzFeed a stronger balance sheet, and is meant to support a turnaround.
Why Peretti wanted it
- Peretti says Allen is a stronger media operator and brings:
- advertiser relationships
- partner connections
- access to capital
- dealmaking experience
- Peretti says his own strengths are more on the tech/product side, especially AI and new formats.
What went wrong with the old media model
BuzzFeed’s social-platform bet
Peretti revisits the era when BuzzFeed bet on:
- viral distribution through Facebook, YouTube, and other social platforms
- professional content getting paid through platform partnerships and rev share
- “BuzzFeed-shaped objects” designed for social sharing
He argues that:
- BuzzFeed and similar publishers did get paid by platforms for some content and programs.
- But the model was short-lived and eventually broken by:
- the rise of creators
- platform changes
- reduced willingness to pay for professional content
- weaker referral traffic to publishers
His larger critique of platforms
Peretti says Facebook and others made a mistake by backing away from:
- news
- professional entertainment
- creator compensation
- diverse content ecosystems
His argument:
- platforms could have spent a few billion a year to support quality content
- that would have made the platforms more trusted, more culturally relevant, and less toxic
- instead, platforms optimized for engagement and cheap content, leading to a “race to the bottom”
Why he thinks AI is the next medium
AI as a new content layer
Peretti frames AI as a new computing and media platform, similar to how social + mobile changed the internet.
He believes AI can:
- make content creation faster and cheaper
- help teams identify what’s resonating
- support rapid product iteration
- enable new formats that were previously too expensive or too slow to build
How BuzzFeed AI fits in
He describes two main uses:
-
Internal productivity and creativity
- AI as a “nervous system” for understanding what content works
- helping teams make better and faster editorial/product decisions
-
New consumer products
- Branch Office: an incubator for new apps
- BF Island: a social/messaging app built around AI-generated inside jokes and shared play
- Conjure: a camera app with daily prompts and playful discovery features
The YouTube ambition
What Byron Allen said
Allen’s pitch includes the idea that BuzzFeed, powered by AI, can become a free video streaming competitor to YouTube.
Peretti’s interpretation
Peretti does not spell out the full strategy, but says the point is:
- AI will make it easier to reshape video into platform-native formats
- BuzzFeed can use existing distribution and new tools to make content more adaptable
- the goal is to build something that doesn’t exist yet, not just clone YouTube
He repeatedly hints that:
- the specifics are still being developed
- the combination of Allen’s assets + AI tooling could open possibilities BuzzFeed couldn’t access alone
Monetization: how BuzzFeed plans to make money now
Peretti says the company will rely on a mix of revenue streams:
- Programmatic ads as a baseline
- Transactional revenue
- shopping/affiliate commerce
- subscriptions and memberships
- Freemium AI apps
- basic use free
- paid unlocks for deeper use, prompts, or features
- Potential native advertising inside new products
He argues that:
- direct audience relationships are now more important than ever
- BuzzFeed wants users coming to it directly, not through platforms
- its existing audience gives it a base to launch new products
Creator economy and the talent problem
What BuzzFeed got right and wrong
Peretti says BuzzFeed was early to a creator-like model, but the platform era changed incentives:
- top talent realized they could make more money independently
- creators moved to YouTube, Substack, podcasts, and other direct channels
- the “collective” model of media organizations got weaker
His view of the modern creator economy
He argues:
- the top creators often get all the upside
- the broader talent pipeline suffers without editors, peers, and training
- some of the creator economy is good, but it can also be isolating and unstable
He suggests BuzzFeed’s future talent model will be more selective:
- some human creators/journalists working in a collective
- more user-generated content
- more AI-assisted creation, especially in games and interactive formats
Reflections on major past decisions
The Disney deal that never happened
Peretti says Disney’s 2013 offer to buy BuzzFeed would likely have been a great financial deal, but:
- BuzzFeed was still in a growth-and-experimentation phase
- staying independent let the company build its culture and influence
- he believes a later sale may have been worth even more
The SPAC and Complex acquisition
He admits the 2021 SPAC process was mistimed:
- BuzzFeed missed the hottest market window
- the Complex acquisition added debt and complexity
- the company ended up with debt instead of the cash cushion it needed
His hindsight view:
- they should have gone public faster
- likely without buying Complex first
Main takeaways
- BuzzFeed’s sale is both a rescue and a reset.
- Peretti sees the future of media as a combination of:
- direct audience relationships
- AI-powered product development
- smaller, more intentional communities
- diversified monetization beyond display ads
- He still believes the internet’s next big shift is coming from new AI-native media products, not just better versions of old social platforms.
- His core thesis remains consistent: media works best when platforms, creators, and publishers all have incentives that grow the pie, not just extract from it.
Notable ideas from the interview
- “The thing I’ve been most excited about working on is really trying to reimagine what should a company operate like in a world where these new AI technologies have gotten so much more advanced.”
- “You can’t have someone between you and your customer.”
- “AI is a new medium for content that wasn’t really possible before.”
- “The human agency and human intention is in the product.”
Bottom line
This episode is part corporate rescue, part media autopsy, and part product pitch. Peretti defends BuzzFeed’s original platform-era strategy, acknowledges where it broke down, and argues that AI gives BuzzFeed a chance to reinvent itself around direct audiences, interactive products, and a new kind of media business.