BuzzFeed laid off more than a third of its remaining staff on Monday, part of an effort by its new owner, Byron Allen, to stem millions of dollars in annual losses.

The layoffs, which affect about 180 employees across the company, including the news site HuffPost, recipe publisher Tasty, and BuzzFeed’s film and TV studio, were announced in an internal memo from the company’s management.

“We’ve been actively managing costs for some time, working through scenarios to save as many jobs as possible,” the memo said. “Unfortunately, the elimination of certain roles is still required. Today’s changes include the elimination of positions across the entire company.”

A spokesperson for BuzzFeed declined to comment beyond the company’s memo.

The layoff is among the biggest decisions made by Allen since May, when he took control of the company in a $120 million deal. BuzzFeed was struggling with $58.4 million in debt and told investors that it was in danger of halting operations as losses piled up. Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s founder, stepped aside as CEO after 20 years atop the company and said he would focus on artificial intelligence.

BuzzFeed has been through many rounds of layoffs and buyouts over the years, slowly shrinking from a digital news and entertainment juggernaut. The company shut down BuzzFeed News in 2023 as part of a round of layoffs that affected roughly 180 of its 1,200 employees at the time. Before Monday’s cuts, BuzzFeed’s head count had decreased to fewer than half that, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

This year, Peretti increasingly focused on making BuzzFeed a leader in apps that use artificial intelligence, including interactive games and communities, through a new subsidiary, Branch Office. In March, two months before he sold the company, Peretti told The New York Times that he was “going back to founder mode” for the effort.

Allen has promised investors big things for BuzzFeed, which is one of many properties in his media empire. When he acquired BuzzFeed, he said it was “chasing YouTube and the other big tech platforms,” and promised to fuel the company’s ambitions in streaming and user-generated content, an industry term for video not created by employees.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Benjamin Mullin/Alex Welsh
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