Who founded The Verge? The Engadget exodus and today (2026)

The founding team

Wikipedia credits three creators, and The Verge’s own pages add a fourth. Joshua Topolsky led the editorial side. Jim Bankoff and Marty Moe ran SB Nation, the sports blog network that backed the new site. Nilay Patel, Engadget’s managing editor at the time, is described on his Verge author page as “co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Verge.”

The wider founding group came out of Engadget. These are the people Wikipedia lists among those who left AOL between March and April 2011 to start the new site.

Founder	Role at Engadget in 2011	Where they are, as of October 2026
Joshua Topolsky	Editor-in-chief	Left The Verge in 2014; led Robinhood’s Sherwood News from its 2023 launch; current role not confirmed
Nilay Patel	Managing editor	Editor-in-chief of The Verge since 2014
Joanna Stern	Staff	Left the Wall Street Journal in 2026 to start her own media company
Chris Ziegler	Staff	Fired by The Verge in 2016 after taking a job at Apple
Paul Miller, Ross Miller	Staff	Not confirmed
Jim Bankoff	Not at Engadget (ran SB Nation)	Agreed in 2026 to join James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems

How it started: the Engadget exits

The Verge began as a walkout. Topolsky left Engadget in March 2011, during a shakeup at its owner AOL, and Gadget Daily News noted his exit on March 12. By March 30 Chris Ziegler had followed Topolsky and Patel out the door, which this site reported under the headline “And then there were three.”

Wikipedia counts up to nine Engadget writers, editors and product developers who left in March and April 2011. Besides the editors, they included product developers Justin Glow and Dan Chilton.

In early April 2011, Topolsky announced that the unnamed new site would be built in partnership with SB Nation and would launch that fall. Bankoff had led AOL’s purchase of Engadget back in 2005, per Wikipedia, so he knew the brand and its audience. He saw room to take SB Nation’s model beyond sports.

The team didn’t go quiet while the real site was being built. Topolsky moved the Engadget podcast he hosted with Patel and Paul Miller to a stopgap site called This Is My Next.

It did well for a temporary blog. Wikipedia reports it reached 1 million unique visitors by August 2011, and Time listed it among its best blogs of 2011. Nieman Lab, writing on launch day, said the months at This Is My Next meant “a lot of people were waiting to see what they’d come up with.”

Launch day: November 1, 2011

The Verge went live on November 1, 2011, together with the announcement of a new parent company name: Vox Media. The site ran on Chorus, Vox Media’s in-house publishing system, which it used until it moved to WordPress on January 28, 2025, according to Wikipedia.

Nieman Lab’s launch-day review picked out the design: big, bold photos on nearly every story and lots of structured data. The first episode of The Vergecast, the site’s podcast, came out on November 4, 2011.

Where the founders went

Most of the original team has moved on. Patel is the exception.

Nilay Patel became editor-in-chief in 2014, when Dieter Bohn was named executive editor. He’s still editor-in-chief as of October 2026, and his Verge author page says he hosts the Decoder and Vergecast podcasts.

Joshua Topolsky stepped down on August 4, 2014, to run new online ventures at Bloomberg. He left Bloomberg in 2015 and launched The Outline in December 2016. Robinhood then recruited him to build Sherwood News, which launched in 2023. In July 2026, the media newsletter Status reported that Robinhood had “gutted the newsroom.” We couldn’t confirm his role as of October 2026.

Joanna Stern later worked as technology editor at ABC News and joined the Wall Street Journal in 2013, per Deadline. In early 2026 she left the Journal to start her own media company. Deadline reported in March 2026 that NBC News was partnering with her as chief tech analyst and contributing correspondent, and described her as “a founder of The Verge.”

Chris Ziegler was fired in September 2016. Patel disclosed that Ziegler had taken a job at Apple in July without telling his editors, Poynter reported. A Vox Media review found it hadn’t affected The Verge’s coverage.

Jim Bankoff ran Vox Media until it was broken up in 2026. As part of a deal announced that May to sell New York magazine, Vox.com and its podcasts to Lupa Systems, Bankoff agreed to join Lupa and lead its media operations, The Desk reported.

We couldn’t find a current, reliable source for Paul Miller’s or Ross Miller’s roles, so we haven’t listed one.

Who owns The Verge now

The Verge is no longer a Vox Media site. On June 18, 2026, Penske Media Corporation announced it had agreed to buy The Verge along with Eater, SB Nation, Popsugar, The Dodo, Punch and Thrillist. Penske was already Vox Media’s largest shareholder. The brands go into a new Penske subsidiary, PMX, with former Vox Media president Ryan Pauley as its president. As of October 2026, the footer on The Verge’s own pages says it “is a part of PMX Global, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Media Corporation.”

The business model has changed too. On December 3, 2024, The Verge put some articles behind a subscription, at $7 a month or $50 a year at launch, according to Patel’s announcement. Check The Verge’s subscribe page for the current price.

If you’re interested in how publishers reach readers on Apple’s platforms, we cover that in can you publish your own magazine on Apple devices. For another 2011 tech story with a 2026 ending, see what happened to BlackBerry.

What to do next

For the founders’ own account, read Nilay Patel’s author page on The Verge, which still lists him as co-founder.
To follow Joanna Stern’s work now, look for her NBC News coverage and her own media company’s channels.
For the ownership details, read Vox Media’s June 18, 2026 announcement of the Penske deal.
If you cite The Verge’s founding date, use November 1, 2011, the day both the site and Vox Media launched.

Who founded The Verge?