Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of the popular left-leaning blog The Huffington Post and ardent wellness advocate, is starting a new venture.
The new startup, called Thrive, will focus on health and wellness, and plans to provide content contributed by celebrities and bloggers. The company will also focus on creating educational workshops and helping companies improve the well-being of their employees, according to Bloomberg and CNBC.
Venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau and Alibaba founder Jack Ma have allegedly agreed to back the startup. Ken Lerer, the managing director of Lerer Hippeau cofounded The Huffington Post with Huffington.
Huffington was a cofounder of The Huffington Post in 2005, and AOL acquired the media company for $315 million just six years later. Huffington has received permission from Verizon, which owns AOL, to launch Thrive while remaining at the company.
A health and wellness venture makes sense for Huffington. In 2014, she published a book called "Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success," which promotes the need for work-life balance. Over the past two months, she’s been touring the country touting her new book, “The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time,” bringing “sleep fairs” to colleges and taking over JetBlue flights to educate passengers on the importance of a good night’s rest.
She’s also been partnering tech companies to get her message out, including speaking at Casper’s “Sleep Symposium” in April and offering up her own bedroom (sleep sanctuary) on Airbnb.
Thrive is slated to launch in a few months.
