Verizon will sell its media group, which includes brands from AOL and Yahoo, to private equity firm
Apollo Global Management. The sale will see online media brands under the former Yahoo and AOL umbrellas like TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance and Engadget go to Apollo.
Verizon will keep a 10% stake in the company and it will be rebranded to just “Yahoo.”
Under former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, the Yahoo and AOL brands were converged into a new online media division within Verizon called Oath. But the Oath project largely failed to gain momentum, and Armstrong left the company in 2018. Oath rebranded again as Verizon Media Group in November 2018 and was run by Guru Gowrappan. Gowrappan will continue to lead Yahoo under Apollo.