For the second consecutive summer, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner arrived in Sun Valley with a proposition for Bari Weiss.

Last year, at Allen & Co’s annual billionaire summer camp, Döpfner privately attempted to acquire Weiss’ The Free Press, dangling an offer worth roughly $120 million in front of the independent media juggernaut, as Status has previously reported. Of course, the bid ultimately came up short. Weiss instead struck a deal with David Ellison’s Paramount, which not only put forth a more lucrative offer but also installed her as the editor in chief of CBS News.

This year in the Idaho mountains, Döpfner returned with another offer. This time, Weiss accepted. Earlier this month, Status has learned, Döpfner invited Weiss to speak at the 2026 Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin, where the German publishing giant will honor billionaire MAGA-aligned investor Peter Thiel. Weiss agreed and plans to attend the late September event, where she will provide remarks to attendees and those watching via livestream. A spokesperson for Axel Springer declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for CBS News.

Weiss’ upcoming appearance underscores the close professional relationship Döpfner and Weiss have maintained even after Axel Springer’s unsuccessful attempt to acquire The Free Press. In the year since, Döpfner and Weiss have continued to cross paths across the media circuit, including at the POLITICO-CBS News gathering ahead of White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, where they were seen mingling alongside other media executives and Donald Trump administration officials and posing together for photographs, prompting the inevitable height comparisons between the towering 6-foot-7 German executive and the much smaller Weiss.

Weiss’ appearance is notable in its own right. But it also puts a spotlight on Axel Springer’s honoree this year.

The choice of Thiel reflects a broader evolution at Axel Springer under Döpfner. Over the last year, the chief executive has steered the company in an increasingly conservative direction. The company completed its acquisition of The Telegraph, explored deals for right-leaning publications including The Free Press and The Dispatch, and cultivated closer ties with the Trump White House, including meetings with chief of staff Susie Wiles, all while Döpfner grew more comfortable publicly articulating his own views on politics and foreign affairs. Honoring Thiel, a prominent Trump ally and one of Silicon Valley's most influential conservative voices, serves as another marker of the company's rightward evolution.

In a Friday press release announcing the award, Axel Springer praised Thiel as “one of the most influential entrepreneurs and investors of the digital age,” citing his role as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, as well as his early investment in Facebook. Döpfner himself hailed Thiel as “one of the rare entrepreneurs who does not merely found or finance companies but helps determine the direction of technological development,” adding that he “reminds us that progress requires courage and nonconformism.”

Axel Springer also defended Thiel from critics, arguing that he has been “attacked and vilified” for expressing his views and pointing to the cancellation of a planned public debate appearance at the Free Republic of Vienna Festival earlier this year. “Axel Springer stands for freedom of speech and a culture of open discussions,” the company said.

That framing, however, is landing differently inside the journalism industry. For much of the press, Thiel is remembered not as a champion of free expression, but rather as one of journalism’s most formidable adversaries. Indeed, multiple staffers at Axel Springer’s U.S. outlets, which include POLITICO and Business Insider, called the move “disappointing” in conversations with Status.

In 2016, it emerged that Thiel had secretly financed Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker after the outlet outed him as gay nearly a decade earlier. The lawsuit eventually drove Gawker into bankruptcy, permanently reshaping the digital media landscape. Thiel’s hidden involvement in the litigation ignited questions over the power wealthy individuals can wield against news organizations from the shadows.

More recently, Thiel has again drawn scrutiny through his financial backing of a startup that initially proposed using artificial intelligence to evaluate news stories and determine whether they were trustworthy at the request of disgruntled subjects. The company has since rebranded as The Primary, pivoting toward A.I.-generated rankings of news organizations and individual reporters. While the founders of the platform argue that their project promotes media accountability, critics see the move as yet another way to undermine accurate but unflattering reporting, particularly at a time when trust in the media at large is eroding.

Considering that history, it's difficult to imagine a more polarizing figure for a media company to celebrate.

To be sure, honoring polarizing figures is hardly new for the German publisher. Since the Axel Springer Award’s inception in 2016, the company has presented it to an eclectic roster of global power players, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Satya Nadella. The company has described the ceremony not as an endorsement but as an opportunity to publicly engage these powerful figures in a forum and even challenge their ideas.

Even so, with the Trump administration intensifying its campaign against the press, Axel Springer's decision to honor Thiel is already raising eyebrows on this side of the Atlantic. Axel Springer may view the award as an opportunity to engage—even challenge—one of the technology industry’s most consequential and controversial figures.

But celebrating a billionaire whose legacy includes helping to destroy a news organization, and more recently continuing to back projects that many journalists perceive as threats to the press, sends a message that many inside the industry are unlikely to embrace.

The latest episode of Power Lines is out.

In this episode: Our exclusive interview with California Attorney General Rob Bonta—the man standing between Paramount’s David Ellison and Warner Bros. Discovery. We spoke with Bonta about his lawsuit to kill the blockbuster merger and asked him for his thoughts on CBS News (hint: he’s alarmed) and CNN’s outsized role in the battle for Warners.

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