Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attends the TIME100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on April 26, 2023.
Dimitrios Kambouris | Getty Images
The Greek media company Antenna Group is in talks to acquire Time from Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff, according to people familiar with the matter.
No deal is assured and the talks are still early, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.
“There is no agreement to sell Time,” said a Time spokesperson, who declined to comment on the talks with Antenna. An Antenna Group spokesperson didn’t respond for comment.
Benioff acquired Time in 2018 for $190 million. Early talks with Antenna have centered around a price of $150 million, one of the people said.
The talks come at a particularly turbulent time for legacy media companies, which are trying to stay afloat as digital-first assets amid competition with free services such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
Comcast announced Thursday it is considering a spinoff of its cable network group. The Washington Post, owned by fellow tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, has lost more than 10% of its subscribers in recent days after deciding it wouldn’t endorse a candidate in the U.S. presidential election, according to NPR.
Benioff and his wife, Lynne, bought Time from Meredith Corp., which owned the magazine for less than a year.
“The Benioffs emerged as the best fit, willing to put journalistic integrity ahead of corporate gains,” Alan Murray, chief content officer of the Time Inc. brands at Meredith, said at the time.
The Antenna Group nearly acquired Vice Media in 2022 before the company declared bankruptcy. Most of its investments have been Europe-centric, though it has invested in Arianna Huffington’s technology company Thrive Global.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.