Vox Media, the owner of The Verge and SB Nation, is acquiring Re/code, the tech news website announced on Tuesday.
In a statement posted on its website, Re/code founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher wrote:
We are thrilled to announce that Re/code’s parent company, Revere Digital, is being wholly acquired by the highly respected digital-native media company Vox Media. This is the next big step in our mission to bring you quality tech journalism, because our work will now be amplified and enhanced by Vox Media’s deep and broad skill set.
We want to assure you that this combination is designed to bolster and enrich Re/code, and that we will continue to publish under the same name and leadership, with editorial independence. We will also continue to hold our signature Code conferences, and even add new ones, again with the same core team and the same philosophy...
We are excited that, after only 18 months, we are able to join Vox Media’s great family of sites and gain new resources and colleagues that will help us grow and get better at focusing on what matters most to you, our readers.
While the financials of the all-stock deal have yet to be made public, the New York Times reports that the founders will not be going anywhere.
ReCode's 44 full-time employees and three contract employees were expected to join Vox, according to the New York Times.
Mossberg and Swisher, both veteran tech journalists with impressive connections to startup insiders, launched their first tech site AllThingsD as part of The Wall Street Journal in 2007. The site, which was an expansion from their All Things Digital conference, featured news and analysis on the latest from the Silicon Valley startup scene.
In the start of 2014, Mossberg and Swisher announced the launch of Re/code after negotiations to stay with the Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones fell through.
The acquisition by Vox comes at a lively time in the news industry as media organizations continue to make moves to sustain and grow within the social and digital space.
Vox Media's portfolio includes the sports site SB Nation, the tech site The Verge and, most recently, Curbed Network which owns foodie site Eater. Vox also made headlines when Ezra Klein moved his political column "Wonkblog" from the Washington Post to start Vox.com, a news site specializing in explanatory journalism. Vox has also created a content management system, a product they've developed in-house, which they hope to begin selling soon.
One big question that remains is how Re/Code will play with Vox's own tech and lifestyle site The Verge. According to Mossberg and Swisher, they are looking forward to collaborating "where appropriate." "While the two sites occasionally overlap, we have focused on the business of tech, while The Verge has focused on covering tech from a lifestyle perspective," they said.