James Murdoch’s Company Said to Be in Talks to Acquire Major Parts of Vox Media

Lupa Systems, the company controlled by media scion James Murdoch, is in talks to acquire major parts of Vox Media, the parent company of New York magazine and a podcast network with prominent hosts like Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Vox Media has been weighing its future for months, including a sale of all or parts of its business. The sale process has drawn multiple potential suitors, including media company Versant, and it is still possible Vox Media will sell to another acquirer, take on investment or decide not to sell.

Vox Media consist of a podcast network, New York magazine and a cluster of websites that gained popularity in the 2010s, including The Verge and Eater.

After months of assessing potential options, the deal talks recently intensified. Vox Media’s board met to discuss potential deals with both Versant and Lupa Systems in recent days, ultimately deciding to pursue an acquisition with Murdoch because his offer included more cash, according to one of the people with knowledge of the discussions.

A deal for the company would elevate Murdoch’s Lupa Systems as a player in U.S. media. The company has a majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival, and it has financially backed Bodhi Tree Systems, one of India’s biggest media investors. Quadrivium, the foundation that Murdoch founded with his wife, Kathryn, has backed The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender and politics, and The Bulwark, a so-called “Never Trump” digital media company.

But in the United States, Murdoch has not been an owner in the news industry, the business that helped make his father, Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire mogul with global influence. James Murdoch is flush with cash after the sale of parts of his family’s media business to The Walt Disney Co. and a $3.3 billion settlement with his family that secured control of the family’s trust, which includes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, in the hands of his father and his brother, Lachlan.

An acquisition of New York magazine would be a coda of sorts for James Murdoch. In 1977, his father bought the magazine’s parent company, which then also owned the Village Voice newspaper, triumphing over a lawsuit filed by its president, Clay Felker. In 1991, Rupert Murdoch sold New York magazine, along with publications including Seventeen and Racing Forum, for $650 million.

The deal would be a major change for Vox Media, one of the last privately owned digital publishing ventures that rose to prominence during the digital media boom of the 2010s. Jim Bankoff, Vox Media’s CEO, grew the company from a sports blog, SB Nation, by cobbling together acquisitions like New York magazine, The Dodo and Recode, the tech site Swisher cofounded that was an early entrant to podcasting.

It was the podcast business that proved to be one of the major growth engines of Vox Media, even as the digital-media industry became challenged. Podcasts generated more than $80 million for the company in 2025, according to one of the people with knowledge of the deal discussions. The network includes shows like the popular daily news podcast “Today Explained” and hosts like social researcher Brené Brown.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Lupa Systems was in talks to acquire Vox Media.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Benjamin Mullin and Jessica Testa/Jared Soares
c. 2026 The New York Times Company

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