Monday, May 19, 2008

Report: Ars Technica bought by Wired Digital

By Mass High Tech

The Malden-based company that produces the Ars Technica blog has been acquired by Condé Nast Inc. for a reported $25 million, according to an online report.

Ars Technica, which is a blog for personal computer enthusiasts, was co-founded in 1998 by Ken “Caesar” Fisher, who is now a doctoral candidate in religion at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, according to his online biography.

The company’s co-founder is Chicago-based Jon Stokes. The eight-employee company is expected to be integrated into San Francisco-based Wired Digital, a division of CondéNet and the online arm of Condé Nast, according to the TechCrunch website.

No financial details were reported by the website.

Condé Nast also bought in late 2006 Somerville-based Reddit.com, an online news aggregator that was started in June 2005 by two University of Virginia graduates with a $12,000 investment from micro venture capital firm Y Combinator.