The New York Times is controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust, which holds 738,810 of the 780,724 Class B shares (94.6%) and 1,400,000 Class A shares, as of 3 March 2026. Class B shareholders elect nine of the 13 directors. The 161,136,228 publicly traded Class A shares (NYSE: NYT) carry most of the economic value and elect the other four. A.G. Sulzberger, a trustee, is chairman and publisher; Meredith Kopit Levien is president and CEO.
As of 3 March 2026 there were 161,136,228 Class A shares and 780,724 Class B shares. The charter lets Class A holders elect 30% of the board (rounded up) and Class B holders the rest: nine of 13 nominees in 2026.
02
The family trust
The four children of Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger created the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust in 1997 and moved their Class B shares into it. The proxy says its primary objective is to maintain the editorial independence and integrity of The New York Times.
03
Who the trustees are
The eight trustees named in the 2026 proxy include A.G. Sulzberger, David Perpich, and Arthur, David and Margot Golden. Together with another family entity, the trust held about 94.6% of Class B and 3.5% of Class A stock as of 3 March 2026.
04
The largest public holders
The 2026 proxy lists The Vanguard Group (9.8% of Class A), BlackRock (8.8%) and T. Rowe Price Investment Management (6.4%), based on their latest 13G filings, dated 2023 and 2024.
The company had about 12.78 million subscribers at the end of 2025, 12.21 million of them digital-only, and total revenue rose 9.2% to $2.82 billion. By 30 June 2026 it had about 13.35 million subscribers, including 12.80 million digital-only.
Suing AI companies
The Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI on 27 December 2023 and Perplexity on 5 December 2025, alleging unauthorised copying of its journalism. Its 2025 income statement carries a separate line for generative AI litigation costs, $13.3 million in 2025.
AI as a rival for readers
The 10-K names chatbots and generative AI tools from Apple, Alphabet, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity and X among its competitors, and warns that the shift to contained ecosystems, where users find content inside a third-party product, may accelerate with generative AI.
As we read it, family control makes it easier to pursue long lawsuits and a slow-building bundle without takeover pressure. Second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 11.2% to $762.5 million, with digital-only subscriptionrevenue up 16.4%.
Who holds what, 2026 proxy
Ochs-Sulzberger Trust
Stake738,810 Class B (94.6%) + 1,400,000 Class A
As of3 March 2026
The Vanguard Group
Stake15,809,453 Class A (9.8%)
As of29 December 2023 (13G/A)
BlackRock
Stake14,111,319 Class A (8.8%)
As of31 December 2023 (13G/A)
T. Rowe Price Investment Management
Stake10,247,094 Class A (6.4%)
As of30 September 2024 (13G)
Public Class A holders as a class
StakeElect four of 13 directors
As of2026 annual meeting
What it means for you
If you buy NYT shares, you get economic exposure but little say over the board; read each year's proxy for the trust's Class B holdings.
For founders: a dual-class structure can protect a long-term mission, but it shifts accountability onto the controlling family.
For publishers: the Times shows a path from print ads to a bundle of subscriptions, plus legal action and licensing to defend content from AI use.
For AI builders: expect owners of premium content to litigate or license, not to give it away.
Check ownership claims against the latest proxy; holder percentages in it come from filings that can be two or more years old.
The Business Engineer lens
In the AI economy, original reporting is training and retrieval input, and the Times is testing whether a publisher can charge for it through both subscriptions and courts. The Business Engineer reads its dual-class control as the asset that makes that long fight affordable.
Public investors own most Class A shares, but the Ochs-Sulzberger family controls the company through a trust holding 94.6% of the Class B shares, which elect nine of 13 directors (as of 3 March 2026).
Does the Sulzberger family own the New York Times?
It controls it. The Ochs-Sulzberger Trust holds 738,810 of 780,724 Class B shares and 1,400,000 Class A shares, per the 2026 proxy.
Who is the publisher of The New York Times?
A.G. Sulzberger, who is also chairman and one of the trust's eight trustees.
Who are the largest public shareholders?
The 2026 proxy lists Vanguard (9.8% of Class A), BlackRock (8.8%) and T. Rowe Price Investment Management (6.4%), based on 13G filings from 2023 and 2024.
The complete explainer, cleaned up and reformatted for mobile.
In short
The Ochs-Sulzberger family controls The New York Times Company through a family trust that holds 738,810 of the 780,724 Class B shares, about 95%. Class B shareholders elect 9 of the 13 directors. The 161 million Class A shares trade publicly and elect the other four. A.G. Sulzberger, a fifth-generation family member, is chairman and publisher.
Correction (10 Oct 2026): an earlier version of this page was titled as a net-worth page and listed the Sulzberger family at ‘1.0%’ next to undated fund stakes. The family’s control runs through the Class B shares; figures now come from the 2026 proxy statement.
How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q, prospectus and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number; outside estimates appear only labelled, with their source and date. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
Share counts as of 3 March 2026, the record date for the 2026 annual meeting. The ~95% is calculated from those counts.
Who owns the New York Times?
The New York Times Company has two classes of stock. Class A shares (161.1 million) trade on the New York Stock Exchange and are owned by the public, including large index funds. Class B shares (780,724) are not publicly traded and elect about 70% of the board: 9 of the 13 nominees in 2026 (proxy).
The Ochs-Sulzberger Trust, a family trust set up in 1997 by the four children of Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, holds 738,810 of those Class B shares, about 95% of the class, plus 1.4 million Class A shares. That is how a family that owns a small fraction of the company’s economic value keeps control of its board and its journalism.
A.G. Sulzberger’s stake (and net worth)
A.G. Sulzberger is one of the trustees of the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust, so the proxy reports him as sharing voting power over the trust’s 738,810 Class B shares (94.6% of the class). Outside the trust, the proxy lists 2,352,186 Class A shares as beneficially owned by him in total, of which 2,138,810 are the trust’s; that leaves about 213,000 Class A shares held outside the trust (our calculation from the 2026 proxy). His personal net worth is not disclosed in any filing, and we have not found a dated estimate from a named outlet, so we don’t publish one.
Who runs it
A.G. Sulzberger is chairman of the board and publisher of The New York Times. Meredith Kopit Levien is president and chief executive of the company. Several other family members, including David Perpich and Arthur and Margot Golden, sit on the board as Class B nominees.
The two-class structure is a deliberate trade: the Times raises capital from public markets while the family keeps editorial and strategic control. It shields the newsroom from takeover pressure and short-term investors, which is part of why the company could invest in a digitalsubscriptionmodel for years before it paid off.
The cost is accountability. Public shareholders can elect only four directors, so their influence is limited to selling the stock. The structure works as long as the family’s long-term horizon and the shareholders’ interests point the same way.
What to watch
The trust’s Class B holdings in each year’s proxy
Board succession among family members
Digital subscriber growth, the main driver of the company’s value
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur, HackerNoon and Search Engine People. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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