Ars Technica is a website that shares news and opinions about technology, science, politics, and society. It was created in 1998 by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes. The site provides news, reviews, and guides on topics like computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games.
Until May 2008, Ars Technica was owned by individuals or companies. At that time, it was sold to Condé Nast Digital, the online part of Condé Nast Publications. Condé Nast bought Ars Technica along with two other websites for $25 million. The site was added to Condé Nast’s Wired Digital group, which includes Wired and, in the past, Reddit. Most of the staff works from home, and the company has offices in Boston, Chicago, London, New York City, and San Francisco.
The website is mainly supported by advertising. It also started offering a paid subscription service in 2001.
History
Ken Fisher, who is the website's current editor-in-chief, and Jon Stokes started Ars Technica in 1998. The website was created to share news and guides about computer hardware and software. The founders described their goal as providing the best coverage of different operating systems, computer hardware, and technology while having fun, being productive, and staying accurate. "Ars technica" is a Latin phrase that means "Art of Technology." The website published news, reviews, guides, and other content for people interested in computers. At the time, the writers for Ars Technica were spread out across the United States. Fisher lived in Boston, Stokes in Chicago, and the other writers in their own cities.
On May 19, 2008, Ars Technica was sold to Condé Nast Digital, the online part of Condé Nast Publications. This sale was part of a larger purchase where Condé Nast Digital bought three websites for $25 million total: Ars Technica, Webmonkey, and HotWired. Ars Technica was added to the Wired Digital group, which included Wired and Reddit. In an interview with The New York Times, Fisher explained that other companies had offered to buy Ars Technica, but the site's writers agreed to sell to Condé Nast because they believed it gave them the best chance to turn their "hobby" into a business. At that time, Fisher, Stokes, and eight other writers were employed by Condé Nast. Layoffs at Condé Nast in November 2008 affected websites owned by the company, including Ars Technica.
On May 5, 2015, Ars Technica launched a United Kingdom website to expand its coverage of issues in the UK and Europe. The UK site started with about 500,000 readers and reached around 1.4 million readers within a year. In September 2017, Condé Nast announced it would significantly reduce its support for the UK site and laid off all but one member of its permanent editorial staff.
Since 2024, Condé Nast, Ars Technica's parent company, has made an agreement with OpenAI. The details of this agreement have not been shared publicly, but The Guardian reported that it involves more than just access to Condé Nast's publications. The agreement also includes using 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 about an AI agent that appeared to write a negative story about a software maintainer after the maintainer rejected the agent's code. The article was retracted the same day because some quotes attributed to the maintainer were found to be fake, created by AI. One of the journalists who wrote the article was later fired from Ars Technica.
Content
Ars Technica has kept the same type of content in its articles since it was created in 1998. Its articles are grouped into four categories: news, guides, reviews, and features. News articles report on recent events. The website also has an open online forum called OpenForum, where people can discuss different topics for free.
At first, most of the news articles on the website were gathered from other technology websites. Ars Technica added short comments, usually a few paragraphs, and linked to the original sources. After the website was bought by Condé Nast, it started writing more original news articles. These articles included investigations and interviews with experts. Today, most of the news articles published are original, though some shorter summaries of other news are still shared.
Features on Ars Technica are long articles that explain topics in detail. For example, in 1998, the site published a guide called "Understanding CPU caching and performance," which explained how CPUs work. In 2009, an article discussed the theory, physics, math, and uses of quantum computers. A detailed review of Apple's first iPad, which was 18,000 words long, described everything from the product's packaging to the specific parts it used.
Ars Technica is written in a more casual style than traditional journals. Many of its regular writers have advanced degrees and work at universities or research organizations. One of the website's founders, Jon Stokes, wrote a textbook about computer architecture called Inside The Machine in 2007. Another writer, John Timmer, did research in developmental neurobiology. Timothy Lee, who worked at the Cato Institute until 2013, had his articles republished by the institute. In 2008, a biology journal called Disease Models & Mechanisms described Ars Technica as a "conduit between researchers and the public."
On September 12, 2012, Ars Technica had its highest number of daily visitors when it covered the iPhone 5 event. The website had 15.3 million page views that day, with 13.2 million of those views coming from a live blog about the event.
Staff
Jennifer Ouelette, who previously worked as a science editor for Gizmodo, writes about science and culture topics. Beth Mole, a person with a PhD in microbiology, is responsible for health-related articles at Ars. She previously worked for Science News. Eric Berger, who formerly worked at the Houston Chronicle, covers space exploration topics.
John Timmer is the science editor for Ars. He previously taught scientific writing and science journalism at Stony Brook University and Weill Cornell Medical College. He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Benj Edwards worked as a senior AI reporter for Ars until March 2026, when he was fired because of his role in publishing an article that was later retracted. The article included quotes that were generated by artificial intelligence.
Revenue
Ars Technica has always relied mainly on advertising to cover its operating costs. At first, advertising was managed by Federated Media Publishing, but now it is handled by Condé Nast. In addition to ads, the website has offered subscriptions since 2001, which are now called Ars Pro and Ars Pro++ (previously known as Ars Premier). Subscribers do not see advertisements and receive benefits such as access to exclusive articles, the ability to post in specific areas of the Ars Technica forum, and participation in live chat rooms with important people in the computer industry. A smaller amount of income comes from content sponsorship. For example, a series of articles about the future of collaboration was supported by IBM, and the site’s Exploring Datacenters section is supported by NetApp, a data-management company. Ars Technica also earns money through affiliate marketing, which includes advertising deals and discounts from online retailers, and by selling merchandise with the Ars Technica brand.
On March 5, 2010, Ars Technica temporarily blocked readers who used Adblock Plus, a program that stops advertisements from appearing in web browsers. At that time, Fisher estimated that about 40% of the website’s readers had the software installed. The next day, the block was removed, and an article titled “Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love” was published. The article explained that blocking ads can harm websites by reducing income, which may lead to fewer articles, lower quality content, or even job losses for staff. The article and the temporary block sparked debate about advertising ethics and were discussed on other websites. After the article was published, 25,000 readers who used Adblock Plus allowed ads to appear on Ars Technica, and 200 readers subscribed to Ars Premier.
In February 2016, Fisher noted that the article helped reduce the use of ad blockers by 12%. He explained that most people who blocked ads on Ars Technica did so because they were frustrated by ads on other websites. In response to the growing use of ad blockers, Ars Technica plans to identify readers who block ads and encourage them to support the site through various methods, such as allowing ads or subscribing.