Conservative media company The Daily Wire is reportedly in trouble as its subscription dropped by a third in 2025 from the previous year, with reports suggesting the company is looking for investors and aiming for IPO to stay afloat. For those uninformed, The Daily Wire was co-founded by podcaster Ben Shapiro and filmmaker Jeremy Boreing in 2015 and is owned by parent company Bentkey Ventures, LLC.
The company has suffered in recent times due to low viewership and layoffs, and an article from Semafor dated June 23, 2026, reported that it was in talks to accept $100 million in investment. The company was reportedly in conversation with Highmount Capital for a funding round that would value it at $750 million.
Additionally, The Daily Wire has been approached by at least four firms for investment, including two strategic investors, and has reportedly received buyout offers above $1 billion. However, the company’s founders “prefer to take a minority, aligned investment to grow the business.”
Furthermore, the company is also aiming for IPO (Initial Public Offering) in the next two years, a process where a private company sells shares to the public for the first time. Its bankers have projected that a $2 billion IPO could be achievable “within approximately 18 months.”
The company’s subscribers, which make up three-quarters of its revenue, have dropped to 850,000 people in 2025. Additionally, ad revenue, which constitutes 20% of the total revenue, has been decreasing since 2022. The videos uploaded to The Daily Wire’s YouTube channel, which currently has over 3.25 million subscribers, have received only tens of thousands of views in recent times.
Additionally, Ben Shapiro’s ongoing friction with fellow conservative commentators, including Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly, has created a divide in his audience. According to the New York Magazine, this was bolstered by Shapiro’s steadfast support for Israel, even as the other commentators have taken opposing stances.
Candace Owens, who previously worked for Shapiro’s company, has a larger audience on YouTube, with her channel boasting over 6 million subscribers. Owens has also spent the past few months rehashing her feud with Shapiro, which began after the October 2023 attack in Israel, and her departure from The Daily Wire in 2024.
The Daily Wire’s CEO addressed the company’s layoff and the audience
Mike Richards, The Daily Wire’s newly-appointed CEO since May 20, 2026, addressed the company’s layoffs and its audience in a May interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Richards, who succeeded Caleb Robinson (The Daily Wire’s CEO for 11 years), claimed that Ben Shapiro’s numbers across platforms were good, alleging that the conservative podcast was “up 7 percent year-over-year across all platforms.”
He believed the company’s audience wasn’t “necessarily shifting away,” adding that its key as an institution was that it was “consistent with what we believe conservatism is.” He also noted that The Daily Wire wasn’t just about Ben Shapiro, adding the company had “12 shows here, and everyone has different opinions.”
When asked about the company’s audience drifting due to Shapiro’s views about Israel and Iran and whether the company shared the podcaster’s views, the CEO explained:
“A lot of what audience? Our audience can agree with Ben on some things and disagree with him on others. Our hosts all have different views — we have a big tent. Conservatism has always had a big tent. I’ve been in media for a long time, and conservatives have always had pretty vehement disagreements on many things. Ben has disagreed with the Trump administration and agreed with them, and I think that’s what people want from him.”
As for the layoffs, he disputed Candace Owens’s rumors that the company laid off 60% of its employees and clarified the correct number was 13%, adding that the company “had been expanding heavily in editorial and adding new talent, so we needed to reallocate.”
“A lot of the staff we unfortunately lost was from production, because we simply don’t shoot as many shows here [in our Nashville headquarters],” he continued.
The Daily Wire has yet to publicly address reports about seeking investors and aiming for IPO as of this article.
Edited by Juhi Marzia
