Ars Technica is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games.
Ars Technica was privately owned until May 2008, when it was sold to Condé Nast Digital, the online division of Condé Nast Publications. Condé Nast purchased the site, along with two others, for $25 million and added it to the company's Wired Digital group, which also includes Wired and, formerly, Reddit. The staff mostly works from home and has offices in Boston, Chicago, London, New York City, and San Francisco.
The operations of Ars Technica are funded primarily by advertising, and it has offered a paid subscription service since 2001.
History
Ken Fisher, who serves as the website's current editor-in-chief, and Jon Stokes created Ars Technica in 1998.
Since 2024, Condé Nast, Ars Technica parent company, has entered a bilateral deal with OpenAI. The terms of this deal have not been publicly disclosed, but The Guardian reported that it is more than just access to Condé Nast publications and extends to the usage of AI in the news cycle to "ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity and respect for quality reporting".
On February 13, 2026, Ars Technica published an article on how an AI agent seemingly wrote a hit piece on a software maintainer after the maintainer rejected the agent's code. The article was retracted the same day after several of the quotes that were falsely attributed to the maintainer were found to be fabricated by AI. One of the journalists who wrote the article was subsequently fired from Ars Technica.
Content
The content of articles published by Ars Technica has generally remained the same since its creation in 1998 and is categorized by four types: news, guides, reviews, and features. News articles relay current events. Ars Technica also hosts OpenForum, a free Internet forum for the discussion of a variety of topics.
Originally, most news articles published by the website were aggregated from other technology-related websites. Ars Technica provided short commentaries on the news, generally a few paragraphs, and a link to the original source. After being purchased by Condé Nast, Ars Technica began publishing more original news, investigating topics, and interviewing sources themselves. A significant portion of the news articles published there now are original. Relayed news is still published on the website, ranging from one or two sentences to a few paragraphs.
Ars Technicas features are long articles that go into great depth on their subject. Beth Mole, who has a PhD in microbiology, handles Ars health coverage. She was formerly at Science News. Eric Berger, formerly of the Houston Chronicle, covers space exploration.
John Timmer is the science editor for Ars. He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and worked as a postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Benj Edwards worked for Ars as senior AI reporter until March 2026, when he was fired over his role in the publication of a now-retracted article that included AI-generated quotes.
Revenue
The cost of operating Ars Technica has always been funded primarily by advertising.
The block and article were controversial, generating articles on other websites about them, and the broader issue of advertising ethics.
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