On the 24th of September 2012, Quartz launched with a radical premise that challenged the entire news industry: it was built exclusively for mobile and tablet screens, ignoring the desktop computer that had dominated journalism for decades. This decision was not merely a design choice but a strategic declaration that the future of business news belonged to the palm of the hand. The founding team, drawn from heavyweights like Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, included Kevin Delaney, Zach Seward, and Gideon Lichfield, who sought to create a digitally native outlet for a global economy that was increasingly mobile. Their vision was to strip away the clutter of traditional news sites and deliver content that was short, long, or somewhere in between, organized around what they called obsessions rather than the rigid beats of legacy journalism. This approach allowed Quartz to report from 115 countries in 19 languages, establishing a global footprint that felt native to the devices people carried everywhere.
Global Expansion And Revenue Peaks
By 2015, the publication had expanded aggressively into new markets, launching Quartz India, Quartz Africa, and specific editions for Hong Kong, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates, proving that its mobile-first model could scale across diverse cultures. The company reached a financial zenith in 2016, generating approximately 30 million dollars in revenue while employing 175 people, a figure that seemed to validate the ambitious global strategy. However, the landscape shifted quickly, and by August, the website registered 22 million unique users while revenue dipped to 27.6 million dollars as advertising spending declined. Despite the fluctuation, the organization maintained a loyal audience, with approximately 700,000 people subscribing to email newsletters that included the flagship Daily Brief, demonstrating that the demand for concise, global business intelligence remained strong even as the market became more volatile.Ownership Turmoil And The Great Firewall
The stability of the early years gave way to a series of high-stakes transactions and geopolitical conflicts that tested the resilience of the newsroom. In 2018, the Japanese company Uzabase acquired Quartz from Atlantic Media for 86 million dollars, a move that signaled a shift in ownership from American to Japanese control. The political climate turned hostile in October 2019 when the Quartz app was removed from the Chinese App Store by Apple, a direct consequence of the Great Firewall and the site's reporting on the 2019 to 2020 Hong Kong protests. This censorship event coincided with a leadership change where Zach Seward became the new CEO after Kevin Delaney resigned, and the financial situation deteriorated sharply, with revenue falling from 11.6 million dollars in the first half of 2019 to just 5 million dollars in the first half of 2020. The staff eventually bought the site in November 2020, only to see it acquired again by G/O Media in April 2022, highlighting the precarious nature of digital media ownership.