The Daily Wire was conceived by
Ben Shapiro and
Jeremy Boreing, who both worked for
TruthRevolt, a news website that was formerly funded by the
David Horowitz Freedom Center. After the duo secured several million dollars in
seed funding from billionaire petroleum industry brothers
Dan and Farris Wilks, the Daily Wire was launched in 2015. Farris manages DailyWire Ventures, LLC (formerly Forward Publishing, LLC, and later Bentkey Ventures, LLC), which publishes the Daily Wire.The Daily Wire became one of the leading news sites and publishers on
Facebook in terms of engagement. In 2018,
NewsWhip identified the Daily Wire as "by far" the top right-wing publisher on Facebook. According to NewsWhip, the Daily Wire was the sixth-leading English-language publisher on Facebook in 2019 through the month of March. The site also had the second most articles among Facebook's 10,000 top stories. In 2021, stories published by the Daily Wire received more likes, shares and comments on Facebook than any other news publisher, according to NPR. In October 2019, the investigative website
Popular Information said that the Daily Wire had violated Facebook's policies by creating 14 anonymous pages promoting its content exclusively to boost engagement. In response, Facebook temporarily demoted a network called Mad World News, which had a financial relationship with the Daily Wire, but issued no penalty to the Daily Wire besides a warning. In June 2020, Shapiro stepped down from his role as editor-in-chief, which he had held since the site's founding, and took on the role of editor emeritus. John Bickley was announced as the site's next editor-in-chief. Its first original movie,
Shut In, premiered in 2022. The company later filed a lawsuit, and the issue was eventually brought before the
Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declared the mandates unlawful with a 6–3 ruling. In 2021, the Daily Wire announced a new
publishing imprint, DW Books, that would release books by Shapiro,
Candace Owens,
Gina Carano, and an officer who fired shots in the police killing of
Breonna Taylor, among others. According to
AP News, this "continues a trend of conservatives setting up channels outside of the New York [publishing] houses", after publishing houses canceled several books seen as promoting extremist views, or refused distribution when other imprints picked them up. DW Books planned to release books through
Ingram Content Group starting in 2022. The Daily Wire's annual revenues exceeded $100 million for the first time as of early 2022, and it had 150 employees. In March 2022, the Daily Wire announced plans to invest at least $100 million into children's entertainment content over a three-year period in response to
Disney's opposition to Florida's
House Bill 1557. In June 2022, the Daily Wire launched DailyWire+, a
video on demand platform featuring various Daily Wire content, including podcasts and video productions. In November 2022, Boreing stated that they had surpassed 1 million subscribers. In January 2023, conservative commentator
Steven Crowder revealed on his YouTube channel that he had received a
term sheet from an unnamed conservative media company (later revealed to be the Daily Wire) that included a provision that, if he were to be demonetized or removed from platforms such as YouTube, Facebook or the iTunes Store, his salary would be cut substantially during that period. Crowder took immense issue with that provision, saying that it enforces policies that disproportionately target conservatives and claiming "Big Tech is in bed with Big Con." Co-founder Jeremy Boreing later responded to Crowder's video, claiming that Crowder had misrepresented the terms of the contract and that the contract would have paid Crowder $50 million over four years. Furthermore, Boreing asserted that the stipulation was necessary to ensure profitability. Other Daily Wire pundits such as Ben Shapiro,
Matt Walsh and Candace Owens also criticized Crowder for his actions, including secretly recording a phone call he had with Boreing and only releasing parts of the call selectively, including a quote from Boreing saying that up-and-coming conservative commentators need to be "
wage slaves for a little bit" while they build their brand. In March 2025, it was reported Jeremy Boreing would step down as co-CEO. In May 2025, it was announced that
Mike Richards would join
The Daily Wire as president and
chief content officer. ==Podcasts and radio==