Business Insider
Business Insider is a New York business and financial news publication launched in 2007 and owned by Axel Springer since 2015. Its parent company is Insider Inc.
Industry: Business and financial news media | Location: New York, United States | Founded: 2007
About Business Insider
Business Insider is a business and financial news publication based in New York City. It launched in 2007 by consolidating industry blogs, beginning with Silicon Alley Insider, which went live on 16 May 2007. Its founders were Kevin P. Ryan, Dwight Merriman and Henry Blodget. A UK edition began in November 2014 and a Singapore bureau opened in September 2020. BI Prime, launched in 2017, put some of its articles behind a paywall.
Axel Springer SE acquired an 88 percent stake in the parent company, Insider Inc., in September 2015 for $343 million, a deal that valued the business at $442 million. Axel Springer, which is based in Berlin, still owns Business Insider, and in September 2024 it became a privately owned media company after separating its digital classifieds businesses. The publication traded as Insider from February 2021 and returned to the Business Insider name in November 2023, when Blodget left the chief executive role. Jamie Heller, a former Wall Street Journal editor, was named editor-in-chief in 2024 and led the newsroom in May 2026. Barbara Peng was chief executive in May 2025, and a Press Gazette report carried by Nieman Lab in August 2026 referred to a new chief executive who is focusing on audiences beyond the website.
In May 2025 Peng told staff in a memo that the company was laying off 21 percent of its employees across all departments, scaling back coverage that no longer drew strong readership and exiting most of its commerce business. Roughly 70 percent of its business then depended on online traffic. The company said it was launching BI Live, a live events journalism business.
On 14 May 2026 Heller told staff the newsroom would scale back in areas including legal affairs while investing in workplace and markets coverage. The Insider Union said ten newsroom workers were laid off, the fourth round of layoffs in four years. Press Gazette reported that US visits to the website had more than halved over two years, to 30.9 million in June 2026. The company has not published revenue figures.
Leadership
- Barbara Peng, Chief Executive Officer (as of May 2025)
- Jamie Heller, Editor-in-Chief