CEO Jonah Peretti made the announcement in a memo on Thursday saying that the company would concentrate its news efforts in a single profitable news organisation – HuffPost.

The company's flagship BuzzFeed.com site will remain in place. "While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we've determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organisation," Peretti wrote.

BuzzFeed News launched in 2012 under then-editor-in-chief Ben Smith. In the memo, Peretti said, "I decided to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn't provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media."

HuffPost is "a brand that is profitable with a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms," than BuzzFeed News, according to Peretti.

Peretti added: "We will bring more innovation to clients in the form of creators, AI and cultural moments that can only happen across BuzzFeed, Complex, HuffPost, Tasty and First We Feast."

The ghastly comment made some think that the company was replacing journalists with AI, particularly as it had been using AI to assist in creating some content, including quizzes, and Peretti said the technology would become "part of our core business."