Japan’s Uzabase Acquires Online News Platform Quartz

In a deal widely covered by online media, Uzabase, a Japanese business media company led by Endeavor Entrepreneurs Ryosuke Niino and Yusuke Umeda, will acquire online news platform Quartz for as much as $110 million, seeking to expand their global footprint.

The acquisition marks the first for Uzabase, which went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2016, and has a market cap of $870 million. Since its launch in 2008, Uzabase has invested in two major products: Speeda, a corporate-intelligence tool that aims to be a more user-friendly version of the Bloomberg terminal, and NewsPicks, a global business-news app introduced to the US market in 2017 as part of a collaboration with Dow Jones.

Quartz was “truly the first new media company to successfully combine quality journalism with mobile technology,” NewsPicks CEO Yusuke Umeda said in a press release. “I am very excited to enter the next chapter of NewsPicks’s growth with a company and team that I respect so much,” he added.

Quartz will take over Uzabase’s responsibility for NewsPicks’ English-language operation in the US.

Uzabase joined the Endeavor network in 2017 at the 68th International Selection Panel in Palo Alto as one of the earliest companies to receive support from Endeavor Japan, which launched in 2016 as Endeavor’s first office in East Asia and fourth expansion into Asia overall. Today, Endeavor Japan supports six scale-ups in the country.

The deal was highlighted by CNN, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal, among other major media outlets.