Technology website Gizmodo has been sold to a European media company, becoming the latest brand to be exited by publisher G/O Media.
AG/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said in an email to staff on Tuesday that the buyer was Keleops Media. Spanfeller declined to disclose financial details of the sale but said it was “significantly higher than the original purchase price for the site.” An AG/O Media spokesman declined to comment.
Spanfeller said that Keleops, which is based in France and Switzerland, has agreed to keep all of Gizmodo's staff employed, who will continue to work out of G/O Media's New York offices “at least for the time being.”
“The site's new owners are excited to acquire a great brand with a talented group of journalists,” he wrote in an email seen by The New York Times.
Keleops operates four consumer technology websites: Journal du Geek, 01net, Presse Citron and iPhon. The company said in a news release on Tuesday that Gizmodo is its first acquisition in the U.S. market and that it is looking to further expand in the United States.
“Gizmodo is an iconic technology news brand with global recognition and we are thrilled to welcome such a high-quality, trusted brand into the Kelleops family,” Kelleops CEO Jean-Guillaume Kreis said in a statement.
Gizmodo is the latest website to be sold by G/O Media, which was founded in 2019 as a collection of websites that were once part of the Gawker Media empire. At the time, Gawker sites included Gizmodo, The Onion, The Root, Kotaku and more.
G/O Media, a unit of private equity firm Great Hill Partners, sold satirical news site The Onion to a group of digital media veterans in April. The company has also sold Jezebel, Lifehacker, Deadspin and AV Club in recent years. Other websites it still owns include business news site Quartz, car site Jalopnik, gaming site Kotaku, Black commentary and news site The Root and reviews site The Inventory.
Spanfeller said in a memo on Tuesday that there were signs of improvement in the advertising market, on which websites rely for much of their revenue, and that G/O Media had “done excellent sales from both direct and programmatic advertising” over the past few months.