In March, legacy content farm BuzzFeed conceded that there was “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue” doing business. At the time, the company was reporting a net loss of $57.3 million for 2025, suggesting former CEO Jonah Peretti’s controversial decision to double down on AI content had officially blown up in his face.
Months later, it’s looking like BuzzFeed’s fears are coming true. A brief glimpse at its stock price this morning paints a horrifying picture [nice] after its grim Q3 earnings report: its stock price fell off a cliff, sinking to $0.57 from a high of $2.09 earlier this year — a nausea-inducing 38 percent drop in a single morning.
The company’s earnings per share (EPS) of negative $0.22, 13 cents worse than analysts’ already-gloomy expectations, clearly had investors spooked. That’s despite drumming up some muted enthusiasm back in May, after TV personality Byron Allen’s family affiliate company bought a majority stake in BuzzFeed. Peretti, who has for years been singing the praises of AI and announced a slew of ill-conceived apps powered by the tech, came away with the flashy new title of “president of BuzzFeed AI.”
“Our vision is to build on the iconic foundation of BuzzFeed and HuffPost by expanding into free-streaming video, audio and user-generated content,” Allen, who owns 13 network affiliate TV stations, proudly announced at the time. “As of this moment, with the power of AI, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube to become another premiere free video streaming service.”
Establishing a free video streaming service at a time when even Google is admitting that ad revenues are plummeting thanks to AI takes some chutzpah, to say the least. But considering that BuzzFeed continues to hemorrhage money — it laid off 33 percent of its remaining staff roughly two months after Allen took over — it feels more like BuzzFeed is chasing MySpace, straight into the abyss.
BuzzFeed first started embracing AI back in 2023 after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using the tech to roll out forgettable quizzes and strange AI-generated travel guides that caught a world of flak. Since then, there’s never been a moment when the gamble hasn’t felt like a major unforced error.
In May, shortly after Byron’s acquisition, Peretti sat down with The Verge for an interview in which he enthused that AI was the thing he was “most passionate about.” He claimed that there was a “shift” in digital media “where AI is going to start creating a new medium for content that wasn’t really possible before.”
Needless to say, we haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.
More on BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed Lays Off 33 Percent of Remaining Staff After Bizarre Pivot to AI
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