Business media company Quartz has been acquired by Japanese business information provider Uzabase. The final transaction amount is contingent on Quartz’s financial performance through the remainder of the year but the deal is valued at $75M on the low side and up to $110M on the higher end. “As we move into our next chapter, Uzabase is the perfect partner to create a truly global business media company spanning from Tokyo to New York. There is a striking overlap in the official values of Uzabase and Quartz, which include the importance of boldness and creativity, genuinely putting users first, being globally minded, and doing everything with a spirit of generosity,” said Quartz Founding editor-in-chief Kevin J. Delaney and publisher Jay Lauf.
Quartz was founded in 2012 and was a part of the Atlantic Media group, which recently has been divesting several of its media properties. Uzabase was founded in 2008 by Ryosuke Nino, Yusuke Inagaki, and Yusuke Umeda and went public on the Nikkei in 2016. The stock has doubled this year and tripled since the IPO with a current market cap of $840M, with the increase in stock price likely serving as a catalyst for the acquisition.
The team at Quartz is expected to stay on and expand Uzabase’s paid offerings. “We’ll quickly be developing paid products for the loyal audience Quartz has accrued over the past six years, building on and learning from the success that NewsPicks (an Uzabase property) has had with community and paid content,” remarked Delaney and Lauf.
