For 25 years, Chris Anderson has been the maestro of wit, wisdom, and, sometimes, gooey blather that is TED. Since he took over the reins of the small but influential annual conference of “technology, entertainment and design” in 2000, he’s built it into a renowned, if sometimes mocked, conglomerate of “ideas worth sharing” that includes a heavily trafficked YouTube channel, thousands of locally licensed gatherings called TEDx, and an archive of over a quarter million talks, including those from Elon Musk, Monica Lewinsky, and of course Bono. There are TED podcasts, a TED radio show on NPR, and an educational program called TED-Ed.
Now he wants to give it all away.
Today he’s announcing his intention to step down from the nonprofit and turn over the whole kaboodle to whoever shares the best idea of what to do with it. “It seems like a bonkers idea, except everything that’s ever happened to TED since I’ve been overseeing it has happened when we let go of something,” he told me, speaking exclusively to WIRED. “We gave away the content, and that’s what made TED viral. We gave away the brand in the form of TEDx licenses. When you give someone else control of something, you’re giving them the motivation to do their best. There are amazing things TED can do in its next chapter. And so I think it’s time to try the same thing again. Let go and be amazed.”
Anderson says that he’s not burned out. But 25 years is a long time. He won’t make money on the transaction—he’s wealthy anyway, from running tech publications in the ’80s and ’90s—and he never took a salary at TED. Despite a perception that TED is past its prime, he says that the organization is in good shape. While membership sagged during the pandemic, the company’s finances have now recovered. Its most recent financial filing reports a break-even balance sheet of about $100 million, and Anderson says TED has $25 million in cash reserves. He adds that seats (most sold at $12,500 a pop) for the next week-long conference, in the custom-built 1,500-seat theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, are sold out, as always. Sam Altman will be in the building!
You want it? Check your bank account. Anderson wants someone with the cash to take TED to a new level. Who might that be? An unhappy default could be some superbillionaire who prefers hearing from marine custodians, evolutionary anthropologists, and “global souls”—all speakers at TED 2025–rather than hanging out at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, Anderson envisions a university, one of the big philanthropic organizations, a major media outlet, a city seeking a cerebral version of the Fringe Festival, or even a big tech or AI company. (Imagine how former speakers will welcome their talks being used to train the next version of Gemini or Copilot.) He muses that a collective decentralized autonomous organization—a blockchain-organized group of many TED-sters—might maintain the current community. That idea seems far-fetched, but so are some of the talks you might find on the TED stage’s red circle. Surprise him.
“There’s an opportunity to bring knowledge far and wide, but with our current resources we can’t do that solo,” he says. “I just want to open the tent and see who can bring in their own version of that vision and the resources to make it real. And part of me just loves the sort of playful surprise side of it. I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen.”
TED-sters won’t either, and that is bound to cause some angst. I’ve been attending TED conferences on and off since the 1990s, when an eccentric architect named Richard Saul Wurman ran the event in a smallish theater in Monterey, California. As a first-time TED attendee, Anderson was so charmed he bought the franchise and extended its audience from 550 people in a theater to millions, making the term “TED talk” into a cliché, for better or worse. When I’ve attended, I’ve written a “state of TED” dispatch that Anderson usually takes in good humor, except for the time in 2009 when I criticized him for not having much content about the economic crisis. (He responded testily on stage.) It will be weird at TED without him, but then it would be weirder for him to go on forever.
To identify candidates with the best vision and sufficiently deep pockets, Anderson is working with an investment bank called Lion Tree to sift through applications. He has a few bottom-line restrictions: You have to keep the conference going and maintain the practice of sharing the talks for free. You shouldn’t make it a partisan megaphone for one political point of view (sorry, Elon). After answering some questions about your vision, your willingness to reach a global audience, and, of course, proof that you are filthy rich, you might be among those few who will engage in long conversations with Anderson about how you will make TED’s future even more impactful and inspiring than its past. (No, you cannot convince him with a killer 18-minute presentation.) “I want to spend real time with the most serious people who are interested,” he says. “To go walking, or just break bread with them, get to know who they are.”
The final call will be his alone. “The good news is that I don’t have an outside shareholder,” he says. “I can make the decision that I think is right for TED’s long-term interests. It’s a combination of a big, bold vision and the right resources.” He anticipates the decision will come within six months, but the transition itself might take a year or two. Anderson says that his CEO is on board with the plan, and the two other executives I talked to said that it feels like a natural transition. “It’s so typically him,” says one of Anderson. Most of the 220 TED employees found out yesterday during an all-hands, which was described to me as “surprisingly sanguine.” Anderson said that their jobs would depend on the new owner, but he couldn’t imagine that person not being excited by their ideas. “It didn’t feel like a wake,” my sources say. “Maybe reality will hit later.”
Anderson says he hopes to be attending TED conferences for the rest of his life (he’s 68) and that he’s willing to help out the new overseer, even cohosting future conferences if asked. In recent years, he has passed off some of his duties to a CEO and other executives and has spent much of his energies on a TED philanthropic enterprise called The Audacious Project, which has raised over $1 billion, largely from superrich donors like MacKenzie Scott and Reed Hastings, for efforts like helping sub-Saharan girls pursue an education. He says he’ll continue to work on that, maybe spinning it into a separate foundation.
Interested? Count your pennies and write to nextchapter@ted.com. The clock is counting down.