Outbrain (Teads)

Adtech / content recommendationUSA

New to Unitard

📉 Public < $1B

Peak $1.1 BillionRecorded estimate

~-93%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2021
📈
Peak valuation
$1.1 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
2022
💸
Last valuation estimate
~$77M

Current status

Public (Nasdaq: TEAD); acquired Teads and rebranded Teads Holding (2025)

The rise & fall

6 moments · 2006–2025

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2006

Founded in Israel

The company behind the “sponsored content” boxes at the bottom of the internet's articles.

Wikipedia

Jul 2021

The peak: a ~$1.07B Nasdaq debut$1.1B

Prices at $20 a share in July 2021 — unicorn status that lasts barely a year.

stockanalysis

2022

Slips out of the club

A brutal digital-ad market and a fading publisher-network model crush the stock in its first full year.

companiesmarketcap

2025

Swallows its bigger rival, becomes Teads

Outbrain closes the Teads acquisition in February and takes its name in June — the combined company trades around $70M, roughly 7% of its IPO value.

Teads

2022–25

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–25

Glassdoor reviews tracked repeated layoff rounds in 2022-23 that reviewers said wore down trust in leadership's assurances — and, after the merger, employees from both legacy companies described an integration that still felt like two firms bolted together.

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Outbrain is a content-recommendation adtech company — the firm behind the 'sponsored content' boxes under online articles — that went public in July 2021 at about a $1.07B market value.

A brutal digital-ad market and the decline of its publisher-network model crushed the stock roughly 93%; in 2025 it acquired its larger rival Teads and renamed itself Teads Holding, worth a fraction of its IPO.

Source: companiesmarketcap / stockanalysis / Teads (IPO July 2021 at $20/~$1.07B market cap; -93% to ~$70M; acquired Teads Feb 2025, renamed Teads Holding Co (TEAD) June 2025)

Founders & leadership

David Kostman
CEO of Teads Holding (since Feb 2025; former Outbrain co-CEO)
Still there — Chief Executive Officer and Board MemberLinkedIn ↗
Yaron Galai
co-founder & CEO (had already co-founded Quigo)
Still there — Co-Founder & Chairman of the BoardLinkedIn ↗
Ori Lahav
co-founder (served with Galai in the Israeli Navy; led R&D at Shopping.com)
Now Founder at SoLEAD communities LTDLinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (12)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard