James Murdoch‘s Lupa Systems media and tech holding company, is buying a big swath of Vox Media‘s holdings.
Murdoch’s company has agreed to acquire New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and Vox.com. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Lupa is paying more than $300 million for the collection of Vox Media assets, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources.
New York Magazine, the podcasts and Vox.com will operate as a subsidiary of Lupa Systems — which will be called (surprise!) “Vox Media” and continue to be led by current Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff. Other Vox Media properties — Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo and The Verge — are not included in the transaction. Those will split off into an independent company under a new yet-to-be-determined corporate name led by Ryan Pauley (currently president of Vox Media).
Vox Media expects the sale to Murdoch to close in four to six weeks, pending usual closing conditions. Penske Media Corp., owner of Variety, acquired a minority stake in Vox Media in 2023. PMC invested $100 million in Vox Media for a 20% stake, the New York Times reported, implying a $500 million valuation for Vox Media at the time.
James Murdoch, the younger son of Rupert Murdoch, had served as CEO of 21st Century Fox from 2015 to 2019, prior to Disney’s deal to acquire the Fox assets. James subsequently had a public rift with his father and brother Lachlan Murdoch, currently CEO of Fox Corp. and chairman of News Corp, and completely exited the family biz: In 2020 he resigned from News Corp’s board over “disagreements over certain editorial content” including the “ongoing denial” of climate change pushed by certain of the company’s news outlets.
James Murdoch, who founded Lupa Systems in March 2019, said in a statement about the Vox Media deal: “This acquisition aligns well with our existing holdings and investments and reflects both our interest in the forward edge of culture and our deep commitment to ambitious journalism and agenda-setting conversations. It will allow us to apply new tools across the businesses we are building, adding substantial production, distribution, and editorial capability to our group.”
Lupa’s acquisition of New York Magazine includes its digital vertical sites The Cut, Vulture, Intelligencer, The Strategist, Curbed and Grub Street, while Vox.com includes podcasts like “Today, Explained.” The Vox Media Podcast Network includes shows such as “Pivot” with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, “Criminal” and “Where Should We Begin?” with Esther Perel.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with James and Lupa Systems,” Bankoff said in a statement. “Each one of these Vox Media divisions is marked by its strong relevance with audiences, its commitment to quality, and its enormous growth potential. We are incredibly proud to have built and scaled several of the leading media properties of this generation. Together under Lupa’s stewardship we are primed to be the best home for talent and the most dynamic media company of this new era.”
About the Vox Media properties that Lupa Systems is not buying (Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo, and The Verge), Bankoff wrote in a memo to staffers Wednesday that they are “each in a strong place as distinct brands, and we have no plans to separate them. Each will continue under its current leadership.”
“I realize there will be many questions that we will not be able to answer yet, but we will share decisions with the appropriate people first as they are made,” Bankoff said in the email, which Vox Media published on its website.
Lupa’s other holdings include a controlling stake in Tribeca Enterprises, the media and entertainment company co-founded by Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal. Lupa also owns a stake in MCH Group’s Art Basel. Through Bodhi Tree Systems, a partnership with Uday Shankar, Lupa also holds a “material stake” in India’s JioStar streaming platform. James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, have invested more than $50 million through their Quadrivium foundation “in support of better journalism,” including founding SciLine, a service that connects journalists to scientific expertise, and the American Journalism Project, which supports local journalism with better business models. The couple also were founding investors in The Bulwark.
LionTree acted as financial adviser to Vox Media in connection with the transaction. Law firm Gibson Dunn is advising Lupa Systems on the deal.
In an interesting historical wrinkle, Rupert Murdoch once owned New York magazine: The Australian media mogul acquired it in a hostile takeover in 1976, then sold his holdings in the magazine business in 1991. New York magazine was bought by investment banker Bruce Wasserstein in 2004 for $55 million. His daughter Pam Wasserstein took over as CEO of New York Media before inking a deal for the company’s sale to Vox Media in 2019, which included the flagship magazine and the Vulture pop-culture site, in an all-stock deal designed to gain synergies of scale. In December 2021, Vox Media merged with Group Nine Media.
In September 2025, the Murdoch family announced the settlement of a long-running legal dispute that left Lachlan Murdoch, the elder son of Rupert, in control of voting shares for both News Corp and Fox Corp. Under the agreement, Lachlan is buying out the stakes of three of Rupert Murdoch’s other children — James Murdoch, Prudence MacLeod and Elisabeth Murdoch, each of whom received about $1.1 billion in the deal — after they had challenged their father’s ability to restructure his heirs’ oversight of both corporations.
