BuzzFeed shares fell 38 percent in a single morning after its third-quarter earnings report, dropping to $0.57 from a high of $2.09 earlier in 2026. The company reported a loss of $0.22 per share, 13 cents worse than analysts had expected. The selloff highlights its immediate problem: cost cuts haven’t stopped the losses, and its proposed AI-powered business is still searching for a viable path.
The warning signs predate this quarter. In March, BuzzFeed disclosed “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue” doing business while reporting a $57.3 million net loss for 2025. The latest earnings disappointment comes after a change in ownership and substantial layoffs, not just another AI announcement.
In May, a family affiliate company of TV personality Byron Allen bought a majority stake in BuzzFeed, briefly stirring what Futurism described as muted enthusiasm. Former CEO Jonah Peretti, a longtime advocate of the company’s AI strategy, took the title of “president of BuzzFeed AI.” Allen, who owns 13 network affiliate television stations, outlined a plan to expand beyond the publisher’s existing business.
“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 said 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.”
Roughly two months after Allen took over, however, BuzzFeed laid off 33 percent of its remaining staff. The sequence reveals a tension in the restructuring: the company is cutting its workforce while proposing to build a broader streaming and user-generated-content business. The quarterly loss shows that the financial pressure hasn’t eased.
Futurism’s assessment is harsher. Its report questions the wisdom of launching a free video service while reporting about Google points to AI-related pressure on traffic and advertising revenue. With that backdrop and BuzzFeed still losing money, Futurism argues that MySpace’s decline is a more fitting comparison than Allen’s ambition to chase YouTube. That’s an editorial judgment, not proof that AI alone caused the company’s financial troubles.
BuzzFeed’s AI bet began in 2023 after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Peretti’s decision to embrace AI content led to AI-powered quizzes and AI-generated travel guides that drew criticism. Futurism describes the quizzes as forgettable, the guides as strange, and the broader strategy as an avoidable mistake. It also criticizes the subsequent slate of AI-powered apps as poorly conceived.
Peretti nevertheless remained enthusiastic after the acquisition. In a May interview with The Verge, he described AI as the thing he was “most passionate about.” He argued that digital media was undergoing a “shift” in which “AI is going to start creating a new medium for content that wasn’t really possible before.” Futurism says it has seen no evidence of that promise materializing.
The immediate test is more concrete than creating a new medium: can BuzzFeed turn Allen’s video, audio and user-generated-content plan into a business that covers its costs? A smaller workforce and an AI-focused leadership title don’t answer that question. The latest quarterly loss makes an answer more urgent.
