Guy Raz Takes How I Built This Independent With Vox Media

Guy Raz just bought back his own hit. The creator and host of How I Built This has acquired full ownership of the business podcast from NPR and struck a partnership with Vox Media to grow it into a bigger franchise, according to the official announcement from Vox Media. The deal marks a turning point for the show, which launched under the NPR banner a decade ago and became one of the most popular business podcasts in the world.

The first changes arrive later this fall, when the show will premiere video episodes on YouTube and social platforms, as reported by Podcast News Daily. New episodes currently drop on Mondays and Thursdays, and Vox Media says the program will start publishing twice as many episodes in early 2027. The partners also plan to take the franchise back on the road with new live events and explore collaborations with other Vox Media business shows, including Pivot, hosted by tech journalist Kara Swisher and NYU professor Scott Galloway.

“The show was created to inspire anyone — not just start-up founders — to think creatively about their own life and career,” Raz says in the announcement. Marking the program’s tenth anniversary, he called Vox Media the right partner to help build its next chapter, and said he is eager to expand the franchise with more founder stories.

From an NPR launch to a global franchise

The franchise’s rise has been a slow build. How I Built This debuted in September 2016 as an NPR podcast, with Raz interviewing well-known entrepreneurs about the companies they built. Since then it has published more than 700 episodes, racking up hundreds of millions of downloads, according to Podcast News Daily. The program ranks among the fifty most popular podcasts in the United States, according to Edison Research, and its guest list has included Richard Branson, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as reported by Talking Biz News.

Along the way the program grew beyond audio: a live summit launched in 2018, Raz released a book built from the show in 2020, and in 2022 it signed a licensing deal with Wondery while radio distribution stayed with NPR. Raz is widely considered one of podcasting’s pioneers. Before podcasting captured his attention, he worked as a foreign correspondent for CNN and NPR, and he helped create the TED Radio Hour and the kids’ science series Wow in the World.

What Vox Media brings to the franchise

Vox Media will support sales, marketing, distribution, business operations and live experiences while Raz retains ownership, according to Editor and Publisher. “Over the last decade, Guy has inspired a generation of business leaders through groundbreaking stories of innovation, creativity, leadership, grit, failure, and success,” says Ray Chao, Vox Media’s senior vice president and general manager of podcasts.

The deal extends a run of expansion for the Vox Media Podcast Network, which has recently added shows hosted by Ina Garten, soccer star Megan Rapinoe and singer-songwriter Will Anderson. For listeners, the practical upshot is simple: more episodes, in more formats, on more platforms — including YouTube, where a growing share of podcast discovery now happens. Raz’s agent, UTA’s Oren Rosenbaum, calls the partnership “a powerful foundation for the franchise’s next chapter” as Raz brings the show to new audiences and formats.

NPR is moving in a different direction

The timing is striking because NPR made a mirror-image move the same week: it partnered with independent creators Kevin Roose and Casey Newton on a new show called Machine Gods, as GenZ NewZ reported on the podcasts topic page. NPR historically concentrated on developing its own personalities and extending established franchises, so bringing in outside creators marks a shift for the organization — just as Raz’s buyout marks a shift for his program.

The contrast captures where the industry stands: NPR is pulling independent creator shows into its network while Raz is taking his franchise independent with commercial backing. Pairing ownership of a program with the commercial and distribution resources of a larger media company is how Editor and Publisher framed the move, and it is a model more star creators are expected to follow.

Ownership is no guarantee of success, though. Financial terms of the buyout were not disclosed, and NPR will retain no ownership or economic stake in the show going forward, according to TheWrap, which cited a Vox Media spokesperson. Doubling a show’s publishing pace is a bet that listeners want more of the franchise rather than the same cadence they have loved for years. Franchise fatigue is real — but with a vast back catalog and demand for founder stories still strong, the bet is that the appetite for this particular program is nowhere near exhausted.

For younger listeners, many of whom first encountered the show while plotting a side hustle or a startup, the shift matters because it puts the franchise’s future directly in its creator’s hands. Creator ownership — rather than network ownership — is becoming the industry’s defining power shift, and the move to video meets audiences where they already watch. Between new video episodes this fall, a doubled schedule in early 2027 and live events, the next chapter will look noticeably different from the NPR-era show, while still asking the same question that started it all. Follow the story on GenZ NewZ’s podcasts topic page.