BuzzFeed Is Dying Because It Bet Everything on AI — And Its CEO Still Won't Admit It

BuzzFeed is circling the drain. The company just reported a net loss of $57.3 million for 2025, its stock is trading at $0.70 — that's not a typo, seventy cents — and in its latest earnings report, the company included the phrase every investor dreads: "substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern." Translation: we might go bankrupt. And the man responsible for this spectacular implosion, CEO Jonah Peretti, has learned absolutely nothing. His plan? Build more AI apps. You cannot make this up. The Anatomy of a Self-Inflicted Wound Rewind to January 2023. ChatGPT had just exploded into public consciousness. Every CEO with a quarterly earnings call was scrambling to say "AI" as many times as humanly possible. Peretti was no exception. He published an internal memo announcing BuzzFeed's hard pivot to AI, promising it would "enhance" the company's quizzes by generating personalized responses. The stock shot from $3 to $15 overnight. For a brief, intoxicating