In October 2016, BuzzFeed raised $200 million from Comcast's TV and movie arm NBCUniversal, at a valuation of roughly $1.7 billion. Along with plans to hire more journalists to build a more prominent "investigative" unit, BuzzFeed is hiring journalists around the world and plans to open outposts in India, Germany, Mexico, and Japan. In August 2015, NBCUniversal made a $200 million equity investment in BuzzFeed. In December 2014, growth equity firm General Atlantic acquired $50M in secondary stock of the company. BuzzFeed also uses its familiarity with social media to target conventional advertising through other channels, such as Facebook. BuzzFeed generates its advertising revenue through native advertising that matches its own editorial content, and does not rely on banner ads. The site was reportedly valued at around $850 million by Andreessen Horowitz. In August 2014, BuzzFeed raised $50 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, more than doubling previous rounds of funding. and 45 in the U.K and 100 in France in June 2018. As of 2016, BuzzFeed had correspondents from 12 countries, and foreign editions in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom, By the end of 2017, BuzzFeed employed around 1,700 employees worldwide, although it announced plans in November to lay off around 100 employees in the U.S. In 2016, BuzzFeed formally separated its news and entertainment content into BuzzFeed News and the newly formed BuzzFeed Entertainment Group, which also includes BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. In 2011, Peretti hired Politico's Ben Smith, who earlier had achieved much attention as a political blogger, to assemble a news operation in addition to the many aggregated "listicles". Peretti hired curators to help describe the content that was popular around the web. Later, the site began spotlighting the most popular links that BuzzBot found. The messages were sent based on algorithms which examined the links that were being quickly disseminated, scouring through the feeds of hundreds of blogs that were aggregating them. In the beginning, BuzzFeed employed no writers or editors, just an "algorithm to cull stories from around the web that were showing stirrings of virality." The site initially launched an instant messaging client, BuzzBot, which messaged users a link to popular content. While working at the Huffington Post, Peretti started BuzzFeed (originally called BuzzFeed Laboratories) as a side project, in 2006, in partnership with his former supervisor John Johnson. Prior to establishing BuzzFeed, Peretti was director of research and development and the OpenLab at Eyebeam, Johnson's New York City-based art and technology nonprofit, where he experimented with other viral media. Jonah Peretti founded BuzzFeed in November 2006 After years of investment into investigative journalism, BuzzFeed News had by 2018 won the National Magazine Award and the George Polk Award, and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Michael Kelly Award.
In late 2011, Ben Smith of Politico was hired as editor-in-chief to expand the site into serious journalism, long-form journalism, and reportage.
Originally known for online quizzes, "listicles", and pop culture articles, the company has grown into a global media and technology company providing coverage on a variety of topics including politics, DIY, animals and business. Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post, started as a co-founder and investor in BuzzFeed and is now the executive chairman as well. BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 as a viral lab focusing on tracking viral content, by Jonah Peretti and John S. The firm is a news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. is an American Internet media and news company based in New York City.