MW BuzzFeed blows past a key debt deadline, raising the specter of bankruptcy

By Lukas I. Alpert

The company was granted an extension until May 18 on a $5 million debt payment after issuing a going-concern warning earlier this year

BuzzFeed recently warned it could run out of money before the end of the year.

The storm clouds are gathering over onetime digital-media darling BuzzFeed.

The company said in a filing late Thursday that it had missed a $5 million debt payment at the end of April and has executed a clause in its credit agreement to extend the due date to May 18.

The news comes just weeks after BuzzFeed (BZFD) warned investors that it could run out of money before the end of the year and was "exploring strategic options."

In Thursday's filing, Buzzfeed said that if it was unable to make the payment by May 18, it would go into default on its loans, potentially triggering a bankruptcy filing. For now, the company is obligated to pay a $500,000 penalty for missing the April payment, the filing said.

A message left with a spokesperson for the company wasn't immediately returned.

The financial turmoil marks a stunning turnaround for the once high-flying digital-media upstart.

A decade ago, BuzzFeed was at the forefront of a digital-media revolution that saw it and other sites like Vice Media, Gawker, Business Insider and Vox Media ride a frothy wave of venture-capital investment to high valuations.

At the time, the irreverent news website had seemingly cracked the code for social-media virality. It would soon become one of the first digital-media startups to achieve unicorn status - defined as as a privately owned startup valued at more than $1 billion - and was ultimately valued at $1.7 billion following a $200 million investment in 2016 from Comcast's $(CMCSA)$ NBCUniversal.

In recent years, however, the bubble has burst, with Gawker being forced to shut down under the weight of lawsuits, Vice Media filing for bankruptcy and Vox Media exploring selling itself off in parts.

BuzzFeed went public in 2021 through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, and things started to fall apart. Within the first year of trading, the stock price tumbled 83%. BuzzFeed is now a penny stock. The company has more than once skirted the threshold for being delisted and went as far as enacting a 1-for-4 reverse stock split in May 2024 - a way to multiply its stock price fourfold - to avoid that fate.

In March, BuzzFeed received a yet another warning from the Nasdaq that its share price had dipped so low that the company was in danger of being delisted. On Friday, BuzzFeed shares opened down around 2% on low-volume trading. The company's shares have fallen 70% since hitting their 12-month high last July.

In its last earnings report in March, BuzzFeed said that its 2025 revenue had fallen 2.4% from the year before, to $185.3 million, and that net losses had widened 69% to $57.7 million. The company attributed $30.2 million of that to a "noncash goodwill impairment charge driven by a sustained decline in share price."

In 2022, BuzzFeed booked a record $437 million in revenue, but heavy debt loads and a faltering stock price forced it to shutter its news division in 2023 and to sell off properties like Complex and First We Feast in 2024.

BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti said on the company's last earnings call that he believed BuzzFeed was being undervalued due to a "pessimistic view" of digital media in general, as well as the company's debt from its 2021 public offering and its prepandemic real-estate commitments.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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May 08, 2026 10:26 ET (14:26 GMT)

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