BuzzFeed stock price skyrockets on news of deals with Meta and ChatGPT creator OpenAI

If you’re an owner of BuzzFeed stock (Nasdaq: BZFD), the last 24 hours have been very good for you. (February 13, 2023), the stock soared thanks to news that BuzzFeed was partnering with OpenAI to generate content, as well as news of a separate deal with Facebook parent company, Meta. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s happened? BuzzFeed stock soared (February 13, 2023) after news surfaced of deals with OpenAI and Meta. The stock closed up almost 120% to $2.09 per share (February 13, 2023). As of the time of this writing, the stock is up another 30% in pre-market trading, hovering around $2.73 per share. 
What is BuzzFeed’s Meta deal? As MarketWatch notes, BuzzFeed has entered into a deal with Facebook’s parent company to help generate creator content for Meta’s platforms. The aim is to help engage more creators with Facebook and Instagram and can be seen as a move by Meta to better compete with TikTok, where many content creators now focus the majority of their efforts. As part of the deal, Meta is reported to be paying BuzzFeed $10 million.
What is BuzzFeed’s OpenAI deal? The Wall Street Journal reported that BuzzFeed will use technology from OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, to generate and enhance content on the site, including personalized quizzes.
So, is BuzzFeed using ChatGPT to create content? No. As a BuzzFeed spokesperson told Reuters, “we are not using ChatGPT—we are using OpenAI’s publicly available API (application programming interface).”
Is BuzzFeed using OpenAI’s tech to write news stories? No. According to The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed’s journalism will remain human-generated. And that’s probably a good thing after CNET’s experience with AI-generated content.
What does BuzzFeed have to say about all this? In a blog post laying out BuzzFeed’s strategy for the future, Jonah Peretti, the company’s founder and CEO, said, “The creative process will increasingly become AI-assisted and technology-enabled. If the past 15 years of the internet have been defined by algorithmic feeds that curate and recommend content, the next 15 years will be defined by AI and data helping create, personalize, and animate the content itself. Our industry will expand beyond AI-powered curation (feeds), to AI-powered creation (content). AI opens up a new era of creativity, where creative humans like us play a key role providing the ideas, cultural currency, inspired prompts, IP, and formats that come to life using the newest technologies.”
And all this is good for BuzzFeed stock? Well, it seems to have been for the last 24 hours. As of the time of this writing, BuzzFeed shares are worth $2.73 in pre-market trading. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s as high as BZFD has traded since the spring of 2022.
What else is there to know? It’s worth noting that shares in BuzzFeed have basically been struggling ever since the company went public via a SPAC merger in December 2021. Some BuzzFeed employees later sued over how it handled the listing.