Verizon has sold off a majority stake in Verizon Media – including properties such as AOL, Yahoo, TechCrunch, Engadget and additional tech and media platform businesses – for $5 billion USD to private equity firm Apollo.

While the sale is reportedly meant to position Verizon Media/Yahoo and Apollo to focus more directly on the organization’s digital media and advertising offerings, it also highlight’s Verizon’s continued divestment from media to focus more on its telco business, which has also included the recent Huffpost selloff to Buzzfeed.

With upwards of 900 million monthly active users worldwide, Verizon Media reported positive year-over-year revenue growth the past two quarters, marked by investment into things like cookieless initiatives, programmatic SSP advancements and other ad offerings. Yahoo News has also been pegged as one of the fastest growing news brands on TikTok, with over 1 million followers on the platform.

Verizon will retain 10% ownership of the new entity, which, upon the deal closing – expected in the second half of 2021 – will be called Yahoo and continue to be helmed by current Verizon Media CEO, Guru Gowrappan.