Morning Brew Inc., the business media company owned by Axel Springer, today bought Express Checkout, a creator-led publication covering the consumer packaged goods industry, according to Adweek, which attributed the news to Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell. Terms were not disclosed.

The all-cash transaction gives Morning Brew full ownership of Express Checkout's intellectual property, according to Dippell as cited by Adweek. Co-founders Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz will join the company full time.

In Short

Morning Brew Inc., the newsletter and media company owned by Axel Springer, bought Express Checkout, a media brand about snacks, groceries and other everyday products. It matters most to people who market consumer goods, because Express Checkout speaks both to industry professionals and to ordinary shoppers. The price was not shared; what changes now is that the two founders become full-time Morning Brew employees and their material will appear across several Morning Brew newsletters and shows.

What the two announcements say

Dippell published his own account on LinkedIn today under the headline "Welcome to the Brew, Express Checkout!" He described the purchase as the arrival of "the newest franchise" within Morning Brew Inc. Adweek's report, written by senior media reporter Mark Stenberg, carries the structural facts: an all-cash deal, no disclosed price, full ownership of the intellectual property, founders joining as employees. The LinkedIn post supplies the operating rationale.

According to Dippell, Express Checkout is a founder-led brand focused on consumer packaged goods, consumer goods, retail and ecommerce. Rosen and Movsowitz run a newsletter, a podcast, social accounts and live events, plus formats such as carousels and short-form video roundups of new consumer products. They also interview senior figures from across the consumer goods supply chain, Dippell wrote. Adweek reports that Rosen began the project nearly four years ago as a weekly newsletter, "a way to keep up with the CPG and ecommerce world."

Movsowitz posted a founder's account of her own. She wrote that Rosen asked her in 2024 to help build a publication called Express Checkout, when it was still his "small side hustle." Along the way, she said, it turned into "a full (acquirable) business." The newsletter became a Substack bestseller, the Instagram audience passed 70,000, and the pair launched a podcast and hosted events for the CPG community, according to Movsowitz.

A discrepancy on newsletter cadence

The three documents do not agree on how often the newsletter ships. Adweek says it started as a weekly. Dippell tells readers to subscribe to a twice-weekly newsletter. Movsowitz calls it biweekly, a word that can mean twice a week or every second week. A subscriber count, the figure that would settle how large the newsletter is, appears in none of the documents.

Growth figures, and what is missing

Dippell gave three numbers for Express Checkout. Revenue has risen fourfold year over year. The newsletter has grown steadily, though he did not quantify that. And the social following has grown by more than 1,000% over the last two years, counted from the launch of the accounts. He said the pair bring "undeniable momentum."

What the announcement does not contain is a base. No revenue figure in dollars, no newsletter audience, no podcast download count and no purchase price accompanied the growth rates. Percentage gains on social accounts that are roughly two years old say little about absolute size, and the only absolute audience number in the three documents is the Instagram figure of 70,000 or more, which comes from Movsowitz.

Morning Brew's side of the ledger

Dippell supplied his own company's numbers as the backdrop. Creator content engagement has risen 30% over the last 12 months, he wrote, and monetization of that content has risen 50% over the same period. Adweek's subheading puts the monetization gain at "more than 50% year over year," a slightly different phrasing of the same claim.

He wrote that the company spent more than a year improving its content operations and the way it monetizes creator-led material, after diversifying into a multi-platform operation that required new teams, processes and training. Morning Brew is, in his words, "openly investing more in multimedia content than ever before" and seeing a return that justifies the strategy. Protecting the "unique Brew tone" is the top priority, he added.

The integration plan is editorial. Consumer goods already feature in Retail Brew, and the topic also appears in Marketing Brew, the Morning Brew flagship, Morning Brew Daily, Maxinomics and Good Work, according to Dippell. The company can now draw on Express Checkout's expertise and relationships "whenever relevant." Movsowitz wrote that the brand built an audience of CPG professionals and organically reached what she called "curious consumers" as well, and that under Morning Brew the pair expect to take on some of their biggest ideas.

Ownership and the creator push

Express Checkout joins a company whose own ownership has changed more than once. According to Axios, Insider Inc bought a majority stake in Morning Brew in October 2020 at a valuation of about $75 million. By August 2022, Axios reported, Morning Brew had launched a creator program that let independent personalities work for it full time while keeping separate brands; seven creators were then on the payroll. One of them, personal finance writer Katie Gatti, saw her newsletter grow from fewer than 10,000 free subscribers to more than 100,000 after joining in January that year, Axios reported.

The Express Checkout deal has the same shape: founders keep a distinct editorial identity, become employees and gain access to the parent's distribution. Dippell calls the unit a franchise, the word Morning Brew applies to its verticals, and neither document addresses branding or sales arrangements.

The corporate structure above Morning Brew has also shifted this year. Axel Springer said on May 21, 2026 that it would combine Morning Brew Inc. with Bisnow in a new entity called Brew Media Group. Dippell's LinkedIn profile lists him as CEO of both Morning Brew Inc. and Brew Media Group.

Why the deal matters to the marketing community

Creator income beyond a single feed

The creator economy is where this deal is measured, and its scale has stopped being small. IAB put US creator advertising spend at $44 billion for 2026, up from $13.9 billion in 2021 and $29.5 billion in 2024.

Dippell's figures say creator content monetizes better at Morning Brew, but not how. Creator content can earn through several routes: a brand deal, in which the fee is negotiated between advertiser and creator rather than set at auction; paid amplification, in which an advertiser pays a platform to distribute content that already exists; or newsletter sponsorship. PPC Land has reported on brands moving influencer budgets from creator fees to paid amplification on TikTok and Instagram. Which of these lines drives the 50% gain at Morning Brew is not stated.

A publisher-owned route to packaged-goods audiences

For marketers in consumer goods, the relevant fact so far is organizational. A topic that Retail Brew already covers will now have a dedicated team and a set of creator-hosted formats inside the same company. None of the three documents mentions advertising products, sponsorship packages or rate cards, so the commercial consequences remain unannounced.

Newsletter and creator deal flow

Newsletters have become advertising businesses at scale. Newsletter advertising adoption rose from 15% in 2019 to 77% in 2025, according to figures PPC Land covered from an industry report. Paved's report of January 22, 2026 found that publishers on its network earned 30% more revenue year over year and marketers ran 40% more campaigns; Morning Brew is among the publishers listed on that network. Substack raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation on July 17, 2025 while moving away from a subscription-only stance.

Purchases of creator and newsletter businesses have followed. Acast bought Backyard Ventures for $20 million on August 11, 2026, adding 200 US creators. RedBird Capital Partners agreed on September 25 to acquire the newsletter publisher Puck at a $250 million valuation. Adweek's own Dealroom feed, listed on the page of the Express Checkout report, also carries headlines on Workweek raising $17 million and launching a B2B newsletter platform, and on Shamrock taking a majority stake in Saylor.

The deals are of different kinds - a podcast network, a newsletter publisher, an agency merger - and Express Checkout's price is unknown, so it cannot be placed beside those figures.

What the announcement leaves out

Several questions are unanswered in the documents: the purchase price; the revenue base behind the fourfold growth; newsletter and podcast audience sizes; how existing sponsors and live events at Express Checkout will be handled; whether the Express Checkout name and its separate sales arrangements continue; and the newsletter's publishing cadence. Dippell's post lists the brand's newsletter, weekly show, socials and upcoming events at expresscheckout.co, and does not say whether that changes.

Timeline

  • October 2020 - Insider Inc buys a majority stake in Morning Brew at a valuation of about $75 million, according to Axios
  • August 2022 - Morning Brew launches a creator program with seven full-time creators, according to Axios
  • Late 2022 - Nate Rosen starts Express Checkout as a weekly newsletter, according to Adweek
  • 2024 - Jenna Movsowitz partners with Rosen on Express Checkout, according to her LinkedIn post
  • July 17, 2025 - Substack announces a $100 million raise at a $1.1 billion valuation
  • January 22, 2026 - Paved publishes its 2026 Newsletter Ad Performance Report
  • May 21, 2026 - Axel Springer announces Brew Media Group, combining Morning Brew Inc. and Bisnow
  • August 11, 2026 - Acast announces the $20 million acquisition of Backyard Ventures
  • September 25, 2026 - RedBird Capital Partners agrees to acquire Puck at a $250 million valuation
  • October 5, 2026 (today) - Morning Brew Inc. announces the Express Checkout acquisition; Rosen and Movsowitz join full time

Summary

Who: Morning Brew Inc., owned by Axel Springer and led by CEO Robert Dippell, and Express Checkout, founded by Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz.

What: Morning Brew Inc. bought Express Checkout in an all-cash deal that gives it 100% of the brand's intellectual property. Terms were not disclosed. The two founders join the company full time.

When: Today, October 5, 2026, according to Dippell's LinkedIn post and Adweek's report.

Where: The announcement appeared on LinkedIn and in Adweek. Morning Brew lists its headquarters as New York City in its job listings; the documents do not state Express Checkout's location.

Why: Dippell cited Express Checkout's fourfold year-over-year revenue growth, its social following growth above 1,000% over two years, the founders' fit with Morning Brew's culture, and the chance to feed consumer goods coverage into Retail Brew, Marketing Brew and other franchises. He placed the deal within a broader increase in multimedia investment, backed by a 30% rise in creator content engagement and a 50% rise in its monetization over 12 months.