BuzzFeed sold to Byron Allen, who will take over as CEO in $120m deal

Allen, a media entrepreneur, to replace founder Jonah Peretti as chief executive with ‘significant’ cost cuts to come

BuzzFeed, the digital media pioneer that was once valued as high as $1.7bn amid a private equity-funded wave of interest in websites that generated massive amounts of online traffic in the 2010s, has finally changed hands for $120m.

On Monday, the company announced that a controlling stake in the company has been sold to media entrepreneur Byron Allen. Allen, who often makes large, sometimes unsolicited bids for media companies, is also an on-screen personality in addition to controlling his Allen Media Group conglomerate, which owns networks including The Weather Channel. Allen’s show, Comics Unleashed, will replace the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS’s schedule starting later this month.