Pop star Charli XCX and investor Michael Burry are among those who have created their own Substack newsletters.
When a Substack executive approached former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown about starting a newsletter on the emerging platform, she was hesitant to join.
These days, she’s all in, regularly publishing her Fresh Hell newsletter on a platform that has become a hub of social commentary, cultural musings, political takes and literary work.
Brown’s newsletter features biting takes on news (she called disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein a “slug who will not die”) and culture (describing writer Olivia Nuzzi’s new book as “absurdly pretentious”). Since launching in 2024, Fresh Hell has amassed more than 75,000 subscribers—as well as what Brown calls a healthy revenue stream.
“It’s more intimate with your own work when it’s just you and your audience,” she said.
If 2024 was the year of the podcast, 2025 was the year of the newsletter. A wave of musicians, writers, journalists, comedians and brands have launched direct-to-consumer newsletters, often mixing written words with video and audio.
Famed investor Michael Burry in November started Cassandra Unchained on Substack, where he shares his investment theories, including a recent one warning about an AI bubble. He now has more than 76,500 subscribers, a portion of whom pay $39 a month or $379 a year.
Music star Charli XCX, who launched a Substack in 2025, recently published a piece describing the “realities of being a pop star,” which went viral, chronicling the highs and lows of fame.
New York magazine, the New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section and the Paris Review all added Substack newsletters in 2025, as did American Eagle and Shopify. Newsweek and Time moved their portfolios of newsletters to younger competitor Beehiiv, joining the likes of life coach Jay Shetty and celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose Arnold’s Pump Club health and fitness newsletter has more than 1 million subscribers.
Substack counted 5 million paid subscriptions in early 2025, up about 67% over the prior year. Beehiiv, a newer entrant, said it built its number of individual newsletters and sites by more than 60% in 2025, to 140,000, and revenue nearly doubled, to $28 million.
Media consumers are increasingly seeking information from trusted online voices. Newsletter platforms see significant growth opportunities in adapting the formats they offer to meet growing demand for even more personalized content.
“There is a stronger push on owning your audience and distribution,” said Tyler Denk, chief executive and co-founder of Beehiiv.
Legacy brands are starting to see newsletters as growth opportunities, rather than as threats, said Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie. Publishers have lost once-reliable traffic from Facebook, which has news content, and Google, which increasingly offers AI summaries on its search page. Newsletters offer a direct connection with readers as well as an opportunity to sell ads or include a paywall.
Eight-year-old Substack raised $100 million over the summer, in a round that valued the company at $1.1 billion. It has helped build media outlets, including the news and opinion site the Bulwark and the Bari Weiss-led the Free Press, which Paramount bought earlier in 2025 for $150 million.
It is increasingly becoming a social network, where users go to peruse work by multiple authors. Substack has had consistent revenue growth but isn’t profitable, according to a person familiar with the matter.
McKenzie said the company’s near-term priorities include expanding its network of sportswriters, growing internationally and helping customers find new revenue streams. It is experimenting with advertising sponsorships; a pilot is now under way with a small number of publishers.
Substack takes a 10% share of newsletters’ subscriber revenue, while payment vendor Stripe collects another 4% fee. Beehiiv, meanwhile, charges a fee based on subscriber count. It also charges a fee when publishers use its ad network.
Founded in late 2021, Beehiiv has raised $50 million to date, including a 2024 round led by venture-capital firm NEA that valued it at around $225 million. It is currently considering taking additional investments, Denk said.
While newsletters are its bread and butter, Beehiiv is also pouring money into website-building tools and pushing further into the crowded podcasting space, allowing clients to turn content into audio feeds.
Dave Jorgenson, who helped build the Washington Post’s TikTok presence, left the paper in July to launch Local News International on Beehiiv. It has 12,000 subscribers, fewer than 1,000 of whom pay.
Audiences these days trust individual journalists more than they do established media outlets, Jorgenson said. The Washington Post helped him build his base, he said, but “I hit a ceiling on what I could do there.”
Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com