Inside BuzzFeed's Secret Lab: Three Apps, a New Company, and a Bet on the Future of the Internet

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 13, 2026--

BuzzFeed, Inc. (Nasdaq: BZFD) today unveiled Branch Office, a new spinoff company that has been secretly developing a slate of apps designed to reinvent how people connect on the internet. The first two are launching now. More are coming this year.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260313571948/en/

Branch Office operates independently, with its own founders, its own mandate, and a product philosophy built for a world where AI has blurred the lines between software and content. BuzzFeed saw a gap no one else was filling, and built a dedicated company, quietly, to move fast enough to actually fill it.

"We're accelerating into an era of infinite fake news, slop, personalization bubbles, and cuts at the organizations that actually care about content," said Jonah Peretti. "We need a solution. Branch Office is that solution."

IN THE LAB
BuzzFeed has been running AI experiments for years – a game where you raised a nepo baby, a chatbot that lets you attempt to talk a Karen down in a Starbucks line. Through hundreds of projects the team learned what AI could do when it wasn’t trying to replicate existing models of static content production, but building totally new experiences that would not have been possible before the advent of GenAI.

While most social media companies are using AI to keep people isolated in their own algorithmic feeds, BuzzFeed’s projects were built on the premise that creativity and engagement can bring people closer together, help them connect with their friends.

THE PHILOSOPHY: NINTENDO, NOT BIG TECH
Led by founder Bill Shouldis, Branch Office operates with a clear vision: treat software as a creative medium. Build fast. Iterate constantly. Let real communities, real culture, and genuine taste shape what gets made.

The guiding philosophy comes from an unlikely place: Nintendo. The gaming giant's principle of "lateral thinking with withered technology," taking maximum creativity out of what already exists, is Branch Office's north star. We don’t need to build our own foundational models or compete with Big Tech. We just ask one question: what's already here, and how do we make it genuinely fun?

When Branch Office looked at the market, they saw two camps: companies building AI to replace humans, and companies building AI to simulate them. Branch Office is doing neither.

"Most companies are using AI to replace human creativity," said Bill Shouldis, Founder, Branch Office. "We're leveraging it to connect people."

THE APPS

1. CONJURE — COMING SOON (iOS APP STORE, US & JAPAN)
Every day, Conjure sends you a summons: a subject to go photograph. You submit your photo as an offering. Something on the other end accepts it. Or it doesn't. No explanation. The lore builds over time, and entirely unlike anything else in the App Store – a daily ritual designed to pull people out of their feeds and into the world.

As Shouldis said on stage, "It solves the eternal problem for people who wanted BeReal to be in the X-Files universe."

2. BF ISLAND — IN PRIVATE BETA NOW (iOS APP STORE, US)
Your group chat has its own language, the callbacks, the bits, the references that only land with the seven people in the thread. BF Island lets you visualize all of it, drop in a photo, riff on it, spin it into something that makes your friends lose it. No algorithm. No followers. Just your people.

3. QUIZ PARTY — COMING SOON
A social quiz app. You find a quiz, you take it, you get your result, and then you share it with your friends. Everyone in the ‘quiz party’ sees each other's results and you roast each other in the chat. People have been doing this with BuzzFeed quizzes for years – screenshotting, texting, posting – but now we're building that behavior directly into the product, so it's easier, it's tighter, and it brings more people in.

THE BET AGAINST THE ALGORITHM
"The Internet disrupted distribution. Now AI is disrupting production," said Peretti. "When you don't have a vision for the content, you get a feed of slop. The value has moved – it's about community, culture, and taste. That's what Big Tech can't automate. Software is the new content."

Branch Office: branchoffice.studio/email
Conjure: whatwillyouconjure.com
BF Island: bfisland.com

About BuzzFeed, Inc.
BuzzFeed, Inc. is home to the best of the Internet. Across pop culture, entertainment, shopping, food and news, our brands drive conversation and inspire what audiences watch, read, and buy now – and into the future. Born on the Internet in 2006, BuzzFeed is committed to making it better: providing trusted, quality, brand-safe news and entertainment to hundreds of millions of people; making content on the Internet more inclusive, empathetic, and creative; and inspiring our audience to live better lives.

QUIZ PARTY: A NEW SOCIAL QUIZ APP COMING SOON

BF ISLAND: A PLACE FOR THE LATEST TRENDS

CONJURE: COMING SOON (iOS APP STORE, US & JAPAN)

BRANCH OFFICE

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli man who said he was sexually abused while he was held hostage in the Gaza Strip is hoping to use his voice to help empower victims who have suffered similar assaults, including in conflict zones, he said in remarks ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 25, spent two years in captivity in Gaza after Palestinian militants abducted him and 250 others during the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“I feel like I have a mission to spread to the world, to use my voice and empower other victims of sexual assaults,” he said Sunday in a conversation with Israel's first lady Michal Herzog in Jerusalem. “I want people who have been through those experiences to know that they’re not alone.”

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly.

According to the United Nations, conflict-related sexual violence is on the rise worldwide, with cases more than doubling in 2025, as state and non-state actors increasingly use it as a tactic of war, torture and political repression.

In Israel and the Palestinian territories, the use of sexual violence as part of the conflict has become highly politicized since the Oct. 7 attacks and the start of the war in Gaza. Rights groups and the United Nations have investigated and documented cases beginning with allegations of widespread rape during the initial Hamas attacks.

The U.N. also said last month that it has verified multiple incidents of conflict-related sexual violence, "including as a form of torture” perpetrated by Israeli military and security forces against Palestinian men and women in Gaza and the West Bank, charges Israel denies.

This year, for the first time, the U.N. included Israel’s armed and security forces on a list of parties “credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.” Hamas had previously been on the list.

In 2024, the U.N.'s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, said she “found clear and convincing information” that some hostages were subjected to such abuse, including rape and “sexualized torture.” But in a recent report, the U.N. said it was “not able to verify” public allegations made by former hostages accusing their Palestinian captors of abuse. It blamed the lack of verification on what it said was Israel’s denial for U.N. groups to carry out investigations.

On Sunday, Gilboa-Dalal recounted again the details of the abuse he said he faced and said he was frustrated by the U.N. In a short, separate interview following the conversation with Herzog, Gilboa-Dalal said: “They have no right to say what happened or what didn’t happen, I was there, not them.”

At least six of the released hostages have publicly shared experiences of sexual assault while in captivity. Gilboa-Dalal first spoke of the attacks in an interview with Israeli media last November, about a month after he was released.

Gilboa-Dalal said his abuse took place over two separate assaults, over a year after his captivity began. He said that he froze as it happened and was unable to resist, terrified and physically weakened after spending most of his time in a narrow cell, deep underground, with three other hostages. He said they were forcibly starved or given rotten food, and denied the opportunity to move around or bathe.

In both instances, Gilboa-Dalal said, he was naked and blindfolded. He said the captor threatened to kill him if he ever spoke about what happened, beating him and holding a knife to his throat and a gun to his head.

“He could do whatever he wanted. I was so weak, and he was so strong,” Gilboa-Dalal said. Because he and the other hostages were constantly monitored, he said, he didn’t tell either of them until just before one was released during a temporary ceasefire in Feb. 2025.

Now, he says he is trying to heal and spend time with family. He is also writing a book and an anime script about his experiences.

He said he worries that other sexual abuse victims are likewise isolated and unable to speak about their abuse. “They may think, ‘maybe it’s my fault maybe I could have done something different,’” he said. “But it wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t any of the victims’ fault.”

FILE - Freed Israeli hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal gestures from a van as he arrives at Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel, after he was released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Stripl, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

FILE - Ilan Dalal, father of Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 in a cross-border attack by Hamas at the Nova music festival, stands next to a photo of his son during a press conference at the site in Re'im, southern Israel, Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

FILE - Freed Israeli hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal gestures from a van as he arrives at Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel, after he was released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Stripl, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)