The Daily Wire, one of the biggest players in conservative media, is in talks to take on at least $100 million in investment, with an eye on an initial public offering in a few years’ time.
The company, which was founded by conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro in 2015, has been in talks with Highmount Capital to lead a funding round that would value the company at $750 million, according to documents reviewed by Semafor.
The Daily Wire, which is trying to take on the New York Times from the right, privately disclosed that it notched $48 million in adjusted EBITDA last year. But it’s also failed to grow its subscriber base — and to keep the ones it has paying, the documents show.
Highmount, which was founded by two former Koch Industries employees, has been helping The Daily Wire to shop around the investment to at least four other firms, including two strategic investors. The company’s bankers said it had fielded buyout offers above $1 billion, but that the Daily Wire’s founders “prefer to take a minority, aligned investment to grow the business,” according to the documents. Those bankers said a $2 billion IPO could be achievable “within approximately 18 months.”
The Daily Wire and Highmount did not respond to requests for comment.
Know More
Once seen as the Fox News for the next generation of conservatives, the Daily Wire has stumbled over the last several years. Strategic missteps and internecine fighting have led to key departures and audience attrition.
The company parted ways last year with CEO Jeremy Boreing, who had spearheaded its expansion into big-budget scripted film series. The move came at the same time that Shapiro clashed with former Daily Wire employee Candace Owens and other media personalities on the right, including Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon.
The Daily Wire’s paid subscriptions — which make up about three quarters of the company’s revenue — dropped by a third in 2025 from a year ago, to roughly 850,000 people. Ad revenue, which is 20% of its revenue, has also dropped every year since 2022.
Despite boasting 3.2 million subscribers, recent YouTube videos have notched only tens of thousands of views, and it has begun to lose subscribers on that platform, according to political digital media analyst Kyle Tharp.
Highmount ascribes some of the company’s recent struggles to an epic medieval scripted series, the Pendragon Cycle, that “did not fully resonate with the core Daily Wire audience,” and “consumed the majority of the 2025 content budget, leaving fewer resources for new programming that could drive subscriber acquisition and marketing.” The Daily Wire spent $50 million on the effort, the memo said.
The restructuring also created a clearer leadership chain of command and clarified the media company’s business priorities. Highmount, an investor in the sports and comedy media company Dude Perfect, envisioned significantly expanding its consumer products division, which already includes Daily Wire-endorsed household goods like Jeremy’s Razors.
“The NYT has done an excellent job of expanding the value of its subscription beyond core news by adding games, cooking, Wirecutter product reviews, The Athletic, and audio content; creating multiple daily touchpoints that justify a premium price and reduce churn,” it said. “Daily Wire has the opportunity to follow a similar playbook for its audience.”
As part of the restructuring, Shapiro agreed to take less podcast money for more equity in the company, and the company planned to hire five “emerging talents” to produce podcasts and social media content. The memo also said that the company will increase its editorial investment to $6.4 million a year from $2.4 million and boost headcount to 67 from 22 as it expands beyond politics into breaking news, investigative journalism, national security, business, sports, health, and opinion.
The View From the Croisette
The Daily Wire is one of several right-leaning media companies that are interested in competing for ad dollars from blue-chip companies. It plans to host a series of events this week at the annual Cannes Lions ad festival.
“The advertising environment for Daily Wire has shifted meaningfully over the past two years. The stigma that kept many mainstream brands from advertising on conservative media platforms during the 2020–2023 period has largely dissipated,” the memo said. “The return of Fortune 500 advertisers validates the platform’s scale and audience quality, and we expect the advertiser base to continue broadening as Daily Wire’s content mix diversifies.”
Max’s view
Even if the $1 billion price tag or the potential IPO price remain far-fetched for a business that relies heavily on a handful of individual personalities like Shapiro, the Daily Wire’s significant paid subscription business easily makes it one of the biggest players in this era of political digital media.
The last several months have clearly shaken the confidence of some investors, but the previously unreported financials suggest the publication’s audience decline could be a blip attributed more to a reduction in content and paid marketing dollars.
Room for Disagreement
The split in the MAGA movement between Shapiro and others in the online right is real, and could alienate a portion of the audience that may pass on subscribing or paying the Daily Wire for its consumer products like Jeremy’s Chocolates. It also isn’t a winning proposition to be investing in a media company that is seeing
declining growth, even in the short term.
Recent digital media sales show just how much the economics of digital media have shifted. Buzzfeed last month
sold a majority stake to Byron Allen for roughly 86% below its peak valuation, while Vice, Mic and Food52 had sold for 90% below their highs, according to
Axios.
