The News
The foundation started by George Soros is looking to expand its reach even further into media, despite a looming federal probe into Soros’ philanthropic arm.
A senior Department of Justice official has reportedly instructed federal prosecutors to draft plans to investigate the philanthropic foundation now run by his son Alex Soros.
But Soros Fund Management, which is now owned by the foundation and whose media portfolio includes the liberal podcast powerhouse Crooked Media, is among potential investors who have held conversations with the vigorously anti-Trump outlet MeidasTouch, Semafor has learned, though one person familiar with the situation cautioned that the talks were exploratory.
MeidasTouch declined to comment. Founder Ben Meiselas told Semafor this year that he was pleased that the organization had grown to over 5.5 million YouTube subscribers and tens of thousands of subscribers on Substack completely organically, without outside investment. A representative for Soros Fund Management did not respond to a request for comment.
Max’s view
Soros, through his for-profit and nonprofit endeavors, remains one of the more interesting players in small- and medium-sized left-leaning partisan media in 2025.
Last year, Semafor noted that Soros was diving deeper into podcasting and audio, investing in Crooked and the radio company Audacy, as well as meeting with competitors like Pushkin, Project Brazen, and Lemonada. Soros is also an investor in Vice, which has quietly been slightly rebuilding its news output around founder Shane Smith’s podcast.
Publicly and privately, people involved in those deals said they were, like all the fund’s investments, profit-driven. Soros has helped steer Audacy and Vice out of bankruptcy and manage the former’s debt, and when Semafor reported on his growing audio ambitions early last year, a source familiar noted that the fund understands how to identify undervalued media assets that it can turn around.
But part of that strategy is clearly paired with the family’s ideological project. Earlier this year, Semafor reported that Soros Fund Management’s leading media investor, Michael Del Nin, was among the speakers at a private gathering of liberal and center-left digital media experts, who wanted to hear about his strategies for acquiring media companies.