“They Need a Real CEO” - Daily Wire Raises $100m to Considers IPO

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:02)
I'm not giving up.

**Tom** (0:03)
I am selling the building.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:06)
The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:13)
Everything's either gonna be okay...

**SPEAKER_4** (0:15)
No!

**Elon** (0:15)
Stop! Or not.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:18)
We are outgunned and we are outmanned, but we have each other. FX is the Bear, the final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+.

**Elon** (0:29)
The Daily Wire has been getting stomped on by everybody, left and right, the last 30, 60, 90 days. They're losing people. People are quitting. They're doing this. They're doing that. And then yesterday's story comes out that Daily Wire, under pressure, seeks strategic investors, targets IPO. I think they raised $100 million yesterday at a valuation of $2 billion, if I'm not mistaken. And the numbers came out, if you want to go a little bit lower on these numbers, showing the fact that they have. Let me just read this. In talks, we take at least $100 million investment, the initial public offering in a few years. The company, which was founded by Ben Shapiro in 2015, has been in talks with Highmount Capital to lead a funding round that would be, value the company, I'm sorry, $750 million, according to documents reviewed by Semaphore, The Daily Wire, which is trying to take on New York Times from the right, privately disclosed that it notched $48 million in EBITDA last year, but it just failed to grow its subscriber base and to keep ones in. It has pain and documents show go a little bit lower. The company bankers said it has fielded buyout offers above $1 billion, but The Daily Wire founders prefer to take minority, align investment to grow the business, according to the documents. Those bankers said a $2 billion IPO could be achievable within 18 months. So $750 million valuation, and then they go to $2 billion when they go public. The company parted ways with Jeremy Boring. We just had him on a couple weeks ago. We had a great conversation. So, Elon, where are you at with this?
Is this it, by the way? Subscribership? Let's just look at this real quick. Revenue has slowed or contracted. This is subscriptions. In 2021, they grew 151 percent. In 2022, they went up 80 percent, 2023, 8 percent, 2024, 10 percent, 2025, down 26 They're down 16 percent advertising, up 22, 22, down 17, down 3, down 5, up 14 Is there any other data that you want to show outside of that?
And what is this? The Daily Wire subscribership from 257 in 2020 to 558, I think that 558 to a million, that's what is a woman of a...

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:26)
Which was huge.

**Elon** (2:26)
Which was massive. Matt Walsh to a million, million two, million 20s, 260,000, 852, 771
Some would say 771 is still a solid number to have today. Elon, your thoughts on the story.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:39)
One thing that Daily Wire did, which is very smart, is it always focused heavily on its subscription model. I think the trend is what matters. We don't yet know if it's going to continue trending down. I think when you look there, you see they go from 1.26 million to 852,000 to 771,000. There's clearly a decline from their peak, which is worrisome.
But again, they have a very strong business because they've always put resources behind the subscription model.
I do think there's trends to things. I think Daily Wire has lost a lot of its kind of, you know, that flair that it used to have. I think now they're starting to get to a foundational base. So if that can stay steady, I don't know how they're going to grow it from there. That's my concern with Daily Wire. I don't imagine that this is suddenly going to trend upwards. So if you're trying to value a company, listen, 50 million on EBITDA on a subscription-based model, what are you going to give? What kind of valuation do you give on a company like that with expectations that you give 5X on?

**Elon** (3:30)
First of all, 50 billion on EBITDA is respectable.

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:33)
It's incredible. That's what I'm saying. It's amazing.

**Elon** (3:35)
You've got a $50 million EBITDA?

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:36)
No, I'm saying-

**Elon** (3:37)
Investors are looking. This is what I would do if I had Daily Wire. We were approached at one point by a $20 billion fund to do a roll-up and buy five of them, and they had interest in me running the entire roll-up at the top. And Tom, we had extensive- When was this, by the way, the conversations that we had?