Arianna Huffington has announced that she is leaving Huffington Post, which she founded, to lead a new company called Thrive Global.
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“She said she’s been thinking about this transition for awhile, but the timing had to coincide with closing a funding round for Thrive Global on Friday”.
“When I chose to create Thrive Global, I thought it would be possible to build a startup and continue as editor in chief of the Huffington Post”, Huffington said in a statement. “Today, it’s clear that was an illusion”.
She told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that “I really thought I could do both, but as we started building it up, I realized that it really needed my full attention”.
Huffington’s objective is to officially launch the new project before yearend.
In addition to aggregating news, the Huffington Post features original reporting. Her co-founders, Kenneth Lerer and Jonah Peretti, would later go on to spearhead the viral sensation Buzzfeed. Its purchases in AOL included its ad technology tools and brand contents.
Since The Huffington Post was founded 11 years ago, it has become one of the biggest online media organizations. The site now receives more than 100 million visitors each month, and has expanded outside of the USA, into Mexico, France, and the United Kingdom, among others. The deal was supposed to be the defining point to keep Huffington at the helm, but her new venture proved to be too much of a draw to keep her at the Post.
Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) owns the Huffington Post through AOL, which bought the liberal American online news aggregator and blog for $315 million in February 2011.
In a press release, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said of HuffPost that AOL and Verizon are committed to continuing its growth and the groundbreaking work Arianna pioneered..
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Although it won’t launch until after the United States election in November, Thrive Global has already identified companies to team up with and has piloted training and workshops with professional services company Accenture. One in particular, health and wellness, is also the subject of books recently written by Huffington, including Thrive in 2014 and The Sleep Revolution, which was published earlier this year. Other investors include Blue Pool Capital; Greycroft Partners; artist Isabella Huffington, who also happens to be the outgoing editor-in-chief’s daughter; Advancit Capital; Female Founders Fund; Zoë Baird, chairman at Berggruen Institute; Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater; and National Basketball Association player Andre Iguodala. (Huffington said she was removing herself from any decisions pertaining to stories about Uber.) She also sits on the boards of Spain’s El Pais, the Center for Public Integrity and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
