Outlet profile

HuffPost

U.S. left

Owned byBuzzFeed, Inc., majority-owned by Byron Allen's Family Office (Allen Media Group) as of May 2026

FundingPrimarily digital advertising; parent company BuzzFeed, Inc. is publicly traded on Nasdaq (BZFD)

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

HuffPost was founded on May 9, 2005, by Arianna Huffington, Andrew Breitbart, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti as a liberal-leaning alternative to conservative news aggregators like the Drudge Report. In 2011, AOL acquired it for $315 million, appointing Huffington as editor-in-chief and president of the newly formed AOL Huffington Post Media Group. In 2012, it became the first commercially run U.S. digital media outlet to win a Pulitzer Prize. Verizon Communications acquired AOL in 2015, placing HuffPost under the Verizon Media umbrella, and Arianna Huffington departed in 2016 to launch her wellness venture Thrive Global. BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost from Verizon in late 2020, completing the deal in early 2021 and folding it into its broader digital media portfolio. The outlet faced significant financial strain in early 2025, cutting roughly 22% of its newsroom as BuzzFeed grappled with falling digital advertising revenue and a public disclosure of 'substantial doubt' about its ability to continue as a going concern. In May 2026, media entrepreneur Byron Allen acquired a controlling 51% stake in BuzzFeed, Inc. for approximately $120 million, making his family office the new majority owner of HuffPost. Throughout its history, multiple independent media-bias organizations — including Media Bias/Fact Check, AllSides, and Ad Fontes Media — have consistently rated HuffPost as left-leaning in editorial framing, headline language, and story selection.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-15; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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