Behind the ~$5B Deal
Apollo acquired a massive internet business for ~$5B in 2021. Five years later, it’s become one of the fastest-returning deals in the firm’s history.
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700M monthly users. Billions in revenue. Hundreds of millions in annual losses addressed. And an enormous distribution advantage that would be nearly impossible to replicate today.
Apollo’s Reed Rayman recruited Jim Lanzone to lead the turnaround.
The company? Yahoo.
I sat down with CEO Jim Lanzone, one of the internet industry’s most accomplished turnaround executives, to go inside Apollo’s PE playbook, the economics of the acquisition, & why Yahoo may be one of the most underrated assets in tech.
We get into what it’s really like operating under Apollo, the leadership decisions behind the turnaround, the value of internet distribution at scale, and why some startups with less than 0.1% of Yahoo’s users command higher valuations.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Jim Lanzone, CEO at Yahoo
(01:33) How Apollo bought Yahoo for $4.8B
(04:16) Taking over a company in the middle of COVID
(07:22) Is private equity really the villain?
(12:42) The mistake that handed Google the internet
(16:09) Where Yahoo's 700M monthly users come from
(17:07) Why Yahoo sold AOL and TechCrunch
(21:21) "You can't skip levels of the video game"
(27:58) Why people still trust Yahoo in the AI era
(30:26) How Yahoo Scout competes with ChatGPT and Perplexity
(33:48) Saying no to the AI gold rush
(37:31) From turnaround to comeback
(39:42) One of the fastest paybacks in Apollo history
(42:50) The biggest mistake companies make at scale
(44:21) Startups worth more than Yahoo with 0.1% of its users
(46:25) Why Yahoo is ready for the next crash
(48:57) Barry Diller, Tinder and the tweet that predicted Yahoo
(54:36) Is Yahoo finally back?
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Inside an Apollo Buyout w/ Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, How It Really Works
Yahoo Is One of the Fastest Returning Deals in Apollo’s History
Apollo bought Yahoo and AOL from Verizon for about $5B in 2021. 5 years later, Yahoo has returned Apollo’s capital, and Lanzone says it is one of the fastest returning deals in the firm’s history. Apollo structured the deal to return cash quickly, and the sale of AOL was part of the payback.
“It’s one of the fastest returning deals in the history of Apollo. We are playing with house money now for what the upside could be here.”
Yahoo reaches 700M users a month, ranks in the top 5 internet companies in the US, and is profitable and growing. Lanzone calls it one of the most undervalued assets on the internet, and says companies with a small fraction of its audience carry higher valuations.
“There are companies that are valued more than us who have less than 1/10th of 1% of our user base.”
Newer search companies have been valued at 6x Yahoo despite its search volume, revenue, and profitability. Reporting in early 2026 put a potential Yahoo IPO valuation at $20B or more. No filing has been made, and Lanzone did not give a timeline.
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Apollo Bought Verizon Media for ~$5B in 2021
Verizon bought AOL in 2015 and Yahoo’s operating business in 2017. It merged the 2 into a single unit called Oath, later renamed Verizon Media, with a mandate tied to Verizon’s 5G strategy.
In May 2021, funds managed by Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO) agreed to buy Verizon Media for about $5B, structured as $4.25B in cash and $750M in preferred interests, with Verizon retaining a 10% stake. The deal closed on September 1, 2021, and the business was renamed Yahoo.
Apollo stood up the business as a new standalone company to house the brands, and Lanzone started as CEO at the end of September 2021.
“We are a 5-year-old company managing a 30-year-old brand at this point.”
Reed Rayman, a partner in Apollo’s private equity group focused on technology and media, led the deal and has chaired Yahoo’s board since close.
Jim Lanzone Arrived w/ 2 Internet Turnarounds Behind Him
Lanzone co-founded eTour in 1997 and sold it to Ask Jeeves in May 2001, joining to lead product management. Ask Jeeves’ stock rose 50x before IAC acquired the company in 2005, and Lanzone became CEO of Ask.com, leading its overhaul until 2008.
His next startup, Clicker, was backed by Redpoint and acquired by CBS in 2011. Lanzone then ran CBS Interactive for over 8 years, a group of 30+ brands including CNET, GameSpot, and SportsLine, growing it from 70M to 220M users. He launched CBS All Access, now Paramount+, and became CBS’s first Chief Digital Officer.
“I’m a growth person. I only do the turnarounds to get to the fun part, which is when you get to start putting irons in the fire for growth.”
He became CEO of Tinder in July 2020 and joined Yahoo as CEO in September 2021. He has sat on the board of Snap since September 2024 and previously served on the boards of GoPro and Edmunds.
Apollo’s Reed Rayman Backed a Growth Plan From Day 1
Lanzone worked with Apollo for several months before close and was aligned with the firm on which assets were unlikely to stay. Apollo set up the deal to return cash quickly, and 5 years later he still speaks with Rayman almost every day.
“The reputation isn’t always great for how they’re gonna manage these things. But I’ve had the opposite experience.”
Lanzone compares Apollo with the owners and investors he has reported to, including venture investors Bill Gurley and Geoff Yang, Barry Diller at IAC, and Les Moonves at CBS. Apollo, in his account, has been no harder to work for than any of them.
The firm’s goal remains an outcome, either an IPO or a sale. Lanzone says that expectation is the same as at any later-stage, venture-backed company.
“PE’s in it for a reason. They want an outcome, whether that’s an IPO or whether that’s a sale.”
Yahoo Was Rebuilt as a Conglomerate of GM-Led Brands in 2022
Under Verizon, Yahoo had 1 head of product, 1 head of technology, and 1 head of content spread across every brand. Lanzone spent his first 6 months evaluating the team and the data before making changes.
The company was reorganized into divisions led by general managers, each with its own product, technology, and content leads, plus assigned sales, marketing, PR, and business development. Every GM has founded at least 1 company.
“You can’t skip levels of the video game. You have to go level by level and win each level to earn the right to the next one.”
Each brand competes in a separate market. Yahoo Finance competes with Bloomberg, CNBC, and TradingView, Yahoo Sports with ESPN, and Yahoo Mail with Gmail. Lanzone tried a single-reporting-line model at CBS Interactive first and found it slowed the brands down.
The mission was reset to Yahoo’s 1995 goal of being a trusted guide to the internet for consumers. Yahoo stepped back from enterprise products and breaking news, focusing content on analysis that helps users make decisions, including the signing of Deirdre Bosa from CNBC.
$100M Money-Losing Ad Tech Stack Was Shut Down, Sold, or Rebuilt
AOL and Yahoo had each acquired 30+ ad tech companies. Yahoo inherited an SSP, a DSP, and a native platform that together lost hundreds of millions of dollars a year and supplied most of Yahoo’s ad revenue, which meant Yahoo’s pages only took ads from its own stack.
“It was hundreds of millions of dollars a year out the door that we had to fix.”
In November 2022, Yahoo took a 24.99% stake in Taboola alongside a 30-year commercial agreement making Taboola its native advertising partner. In February 2023, Yahoo announced cuts of 20% of the company, about 1,600 people concentrated in ad tech, with 1,000 leaving immediately and 600 over the following 6 months. The SSP was shut down so Yahoo could optimize yield across all buyers.
The DSP was kept as a growth business. Yahoo says it wins 9 of 10 head-to-head tests, driven by first-party data from a logged-in audience.
Divesting EdgeCast, TechCrunch, & AOL Helped Return Apollo’s Capital
EdgeCast, a content delivery network competing with Akamai, was the first asset to go. Limelight acquired it in June 2022 for stock valued at about $300M, leaving Yahoo with roughly 1/3 of the combined company, renamed Edgio.
TechCrunch went to Regent in March 2025 and Rivals to On3’s ownership group in April 2025, with Yahoo keeping stakes in both. Engadget was sold to Static Media in 2026. Yahoo also exited enterprise news coverage, including White House correspondents.
“It’s one of the fastest returning deals in the history of Apollo. We are playing with house money now for what the upside could be here.”
Yahoo signed a definitive agreement in October 2025 to sell AOL to Bending Spoons. Terms were not disclosed, and Reuters reported the price at about $1.4B.
Yahoo Scout Is Its First In-House Search Engine in 17 Years
Yahoo outsourced search in June 2000, first to Inktomi and then to Google, when search had no ad business model and was treated as a cost center. For the 17 years before Scout, Yahoo search ran largely on Microsoft, which remains a partner. Yahoo is still the 3rd-ranked search engine in the US.
“The original sin of Yahoo was giving search away to Google in June of 2000.”
Yahoo Scout launched in beta in January 2026. It grounds queries in Yahoo’s 30 years of search history, publisher relationships, knowledge graph, and user data, alongside Microsoft’s Bing grounding API, then sends that context to Anthropic’s Claude, Scout’s primary model. Lanzone says Haiku was the model at launch and Yahoo now uses others. Yahoo renders the results in its own interface.
“The ability to fend for ourselves and own that asset again was just life-changing for us.”
Scout is available to Yahoo’s nearly 250M US users, with attribution and referrals to publishers in every answer. MyScout adds a personalized homepage for logged-in users covering news, teams, stocks, weather, and the inbox.
700M Monthly Users, With 75% Arriving Direct
Yahoo reaches 700M users a month and roughly 90% of the US online population, ranking in the top 5 in the US. Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance each draw 100M+ monthly users, and about 1/3 of Americans have a Yahoo Mail account.
“75% of our users are coming directly to Yahoo. That’s one of the highest percentages on the internet.”
About 75% of daily users are logged in. Roughly half the audience is Gen Z and millennial, and Yahoo reports a 31-point lift in Gen Z brand love from campaigns including Cardi B and Kyle Cooke.
College Fantasy Football, launched in 2026, drew users of whom 40% were new to Yahoo. Yahoo Fantasy had its 3 biggest NFL days ever this season.
Startups With Under 0.1% of Yahoo’s Users Carry Higher Valuations
Lanzone says companies with less than one-tenth of 1% of Yahoo’s user base are valued above it, and that newer search companies have been valued at 6x Yahoo despite its search volume, revenue, and profitability.
“There are companies that are valued more than us who have less than one-tenth of 1% of our user base.”
He describes Yahoo as profitable and growing. High startup valuations have kept Yahoo from large acquisitions. It has bought smaller startups, including Artifact in 2024, and brought their teams in to lead core products.
Reporting in early 2026 put a potential IPO valuation at $20B or more. No filing has been made, and Lanzone did not give a timeline.
Yahoo’s Next Phase
Lanzone describes Yahoo as moving from turnaround to comeback. Apollo’s capital has been returned, the ad tech stack has been restructured, and the portfolio has been narrowed to Finance, Sports, Mail, News, and Search.
Scout is the core of the next phase, running as an answer engine and as an intelligence layer across Yahoo products. Lanzone sees personal email & calendar data as an opening in agents, since new agent products ask for that access first.
Yahoo has also launched a DSP Agent Network, an AI-powered Planner in Yahoo Mail, the AlphaSpace investing platform in Yahoo Finance, and a daily AI & technology show with Deirdre Bosa.
“I really believe that this is one of those times when the best days of Yahoo can really be ahead of it.”
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