Quartz (publication)

• 1. Introduction

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  Quartz, the American business news website, was born in New York City on the 24th of September 2012 with a clear ambition: to serve "business people in the new global economy" through a digitally native outlet built for mobile and tablet screens. Its founding team drew from the upper ranks of some of the most respected newsrooms in the world. Yet within a decade, this same publication would be caught in a spiral of ownership changes, revenue collapses, and a final chapter involving AI-written articles that drew sharp public scrutiny. What went right? What unraveled? And what does Quartz's arc reveal about the economics of digital journalism in an era of constant disruption?

• 2. A Newsroom Built From Titans

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  Kevin Delaney came to Quartz from WSJ.com, where he had served as managing director. Alongside him were Zach Seward, a Wall Street Journal social media editor, and Gideon Lichfield, who had been a global news editor at The Economist. The founding team pulled talent from Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, assembling a roster that signaled serious editorial intent from day one.

  Quartz's structure broke from tradition from the start. Rather than organizing coverage around standard "beats," the publication organized its reporting around what it called "obsessions" - a collection of phenomena the editors considered worth tracking intensely. Stories were designed to be either short or long, with nothing in between. That philosophy extended to its visual language: Quartz built its own chart-making tool, Chartbuilder, which would eventually underpin the Atlas platform and spread to newsrooms far beyond its own walls.

• 3. Going Global

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  By 2015, Quartz had expanded into India with a dedicated publication, Quartz India, and launched Quartz Africa for the continent. That same year it rolled out region-specific publications for Hong Kong, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates. The New York headquarters anchored a wider network of correspondents in London, Hong Kong, India, Los Angeles, Thailand, Washington DC, and elsewhere.

  According to the publication's own website, its team reported from 115 countries in 19 languages. Ad Age reported that by 2016, Quartz was generating around $30 million in annual revenue and employed 175 people. Approximately 700,000 people subscribed to its suite of email newsletters, anchored by its flagship Daily Brief. In August of that period, the site recorded approximately 22 million unique users.

• 4. Ownership in Flux

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  In 2018, the Japanese company Uzabase acquired Quartz from its founding owner, Atlantic Media, for $86 million. The transition brought new leadership dynamics. In October 2019, Zach Seward became CEO after co-CEO and editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney resigned. That same month, Apple removed Quartz's app from the Chinese App Store as part of the Great Firewall enforcement, following the publication's coverage of the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests.

  The financial picture darkened quickly. Revenue fell from $11.6 million in the first half of 2019 to $5 million in the same period in 2020. Uzabase sold Quartz to its own staff in November 2020. G/O Media then acquired the site in April 2022, ending the staff-ownership experiment. During this period, Quartz had also operated a paywall from 2019 through 2022, a strategy that did not outlast the G/O Media transition.

• 5. Chartbuilder Beyond Quartz

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  One lasting technical contribution from Quartz was Chartbuilder, the internal tool that powered the Atlas platform. The tool escaped Quartz's own walls and was adopted by a wide range of media organizations: CNBC, FiveThirtyEight, NBC News, New Hampshire Public Radio, NPR, The New Yorker, The Press-Enterprise, and The Wall Street Journal all used it at various points. For a publication navigating ownership turbulence and revenue pressure, Chartbuilder represented an unusual case of product influence extending well beyond its own editorial reach.

• 6. The AI Controversy

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  In December 2024, Quartz shut down a ChatGPT-powered tool that had been quietly writing hundreds of daily articles about securities and exchange filings for an entire year. The reason: the tool had been publishing incorrect names and figures that actually belonged to other companies. A G/O Media spokesperson described the AI reporting tools as "purely experimental."

  By January 2025, the controversy deepened. Quartz had expanded its use of generative AI to produce longer articles, each carrying a disclaimer about potential inaccuracies from experimental technology. Critics noted that these articles frequently summarized other sources in ways that mangled or misrepresented the originals. That same month, Quartz India was shut down, a year after the regional edition had gone dark. In April 2025, G/O Media sold Quartz and its sister site The Inventory to Redbrick, a Canadian software firm. Ten of the twelve remaining newsroom employees were let go in the transition.