Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attends the TIME100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on April 26, 2023.
Dimitrios Cambris | Getty Images
Greek media company Antenna Group is in talks to buy fellow media company Time Inc. sales force Co-founder Marc Benioff said, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The people, who requested anonymity because the talks are private, said no agreement was guaranteed and talks were still in the early stages.
A Time Inc. spokesperson said, “There is no agreement to sell Time Inc.,” but declined to comment on negotiations with Antenna. An Antenna Group spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Benioff bought Time in 2018 for $190 million. Early talks with Antenna centered around a price tag of $150 million, one of the people said.
The talks come at a particularly tumultuous time for legacy media companies, which are trying to survive as digital-first assets amid competition from free services such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
comcast announced Thursday that it is considering a spinoff of its cable network group. The Washington Post, owned by tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, lost more than 10% of its subscribers in recent days after deciding not to endorse a candidate in the U.S. presidential election, according to NPR. That’s what it means.
Benioff and his wife, Lynn, purchased Time from Meredith Co., which had owned the magazine for less than a year.
Alan Murray, Meredith’s chief content officer for Time’s brand, said at the time: “The Benioffs emerged as the perfect fit because they put journalistic integrity above corporate profits.”
Antenna Group nearly acquired Vice Media in 2022 before the company declared bankruptcy. Most of the company’s investments are focused on Europe, but it also has an investment in Arianna Huffington’s technology company Thrive Global.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the name of the media company Time.
