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NBCUniversal Gives BuzzFeed Another $200 Million (Report)

NBCUniversal Gives BuzzFeed Another $200 Million (Report)

NBCUniversal is finalizing a deal to invest an additional $200 million in BuzzFeed, one year after splashing the same sum of cash on the massively popular digital publisher, according a report published Thursday on Recode.

Citing sources close to the deal, Recode said that the latest round of investment values BuzzFeed at $1.7 billion. The post-money valuation in NBCU’s last go-round with BuzzFeed was $1.5 billion, indicating roughly the same value for the company, once the additional $200 million was factored in.

BuzzFeed fell short of its 2015 revenue goals, but the company shot down a Financial Times report that it cut its 2016 projections in half.

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Earlier this year, BuzzFeed divided its editorial side into a news department, overseen by BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, and an entertainment department, headed by Ze Frank, the president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures.

While BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said “this structure will allow us to be better at entertainment and better at news” in a staff memo announcing the move and compared it with Ted Turner’s successful stewardship of CNN and TBS, he acknowledged that the growing importance of digital video inspired the move.

“As digital video becomes ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will find an expression as video, just like everything we do works on mobile and social platforms,” Peretti wrote.

An NBCUniversal spokeswoman declined to comment.

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