SCOOP: Substack in Talks to Raise Financing as It Taps Into the Zeitgeist of Trump II
Description
</picture>Substack is quietly fundraising on the back of exploding usage of its mobile app and a reignited enthusiasm for new political newsletters, thanks to President Donald Trump.
The company believes its mobile application is becoming a powerful force for driving paid subscribers to the 500,000 creators now on its platform.
And it doesn’t hurt that Substack is signaling to investors that it could do more to help newsletter writers with sponsorships, adding a potential new line of revenue for the creator company and its writers.
Sources tell me that Substack is pitching investors on a round between $50 million and $100 million that would value it above its roughly $700 million last round price.
How much more is a question for investors to answer.
I hear that Substack has already received some term sheets and that, surprisingly, Benchmark is among the investors that have considered an investment in the Andreessen Horowitz-backed company.
Substack is telling investors that it’s currently generating about $45 million in annual recurring revenue. The total subscription revenue flowing to Substack creators is roughly $450 million, sources tell me.
A spokesperson for Substack declined to comment for this story.
We’re at a moment when Substacks are surging back into the zeitgeist. For instance, Emily Sundberg, whose newsletter Feed Me is the number four business newsletter on Substack, has justifiably become a source of media fascination this year with a profile in the New York Times, coverage of her wedding in Vogue, a story in Air Mail, and an interview in Oliver Darcy’s Beehiiv-hosted newsletter Status. (Thanks for name-checking me, Emily.)
Publications like Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler have built real publications on top of Substack. Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo is quickly becoming a Substack juggernaut. The generally anti-Trump but conservative The Bulwark has become a staple of resistance media. Relative unknown MeidasTouch Network ranks four in U.S. politics, generating oodles of revenue on the back of anti-Trump coverage. Gavin Newsom launched a Substack on Tuesday.
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