Axios Media has been acquired by Cox Enterprises in a cash deal said to value the digital news company at $525 million.
Media and advertising firm Cox Enterprises had taken a minority stake in Axios in November 2021. The $525 million deal price is about five times Axios’s projected 2022 revenue of more than $100 million, the New York Times reported. Axios had raised $55 million in funding.
Axios was launched in January 2017 by three ex-Politico execs: Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz. It was previously reported that German publishing giant Axel Springer, which owns Insider, was in talks to acquire Axios. Last summer, Axel Springer acquired Politico in a $1 billion-plus deal. Per a Wall Street Journal report last year, Axios was looking to sell for between $400 million and $450 million.
According to Cox Enterprises, Axios’s three co-founders will continue to own “substantial stakes” in the company and will lead editorial and day-to-day business decisions.
Axios HQ, the Axios communications software business, will become an independent company majority owned by the founders and will include Cox Enterprises as sole minority investor. VandeHei will be chairman of the board of Axios HQ and Roy Schwartz will be its CEO.
Cox Enterprises’ current media companies — the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dayton Daily News and other Ohio newspapers — are not affected by the deal and each will continue to operate independently.
“With so much happening in the world, Axios plays a critical role in delivering balanced, trusted news that people need,” Cox Enterprises chairman and CEO Alex Taylor, who will join the Axios board, said in a statement. “Our company started in the media business, and we have always had a passion for journalism. Bringing a forward-thinking organization like Axios into Cox Enterprises is exciting for us on many levels, and we look forward to helping them continue to scale and grow.”
VandeHei commented, “We have found our kindred spirit for creating a great, trusted, consequential media company that can outlast us all. Our shared ambitions should be clear: to spread clinical, nonpartisan, trusted journalism to as many cities and as many topics as fast as possible.”
