WASHINGTON • The Huffington Post news site's editor-in-chief, Ms Arianna Huffington, has said she would leave the company she co-founded to focus on running her new health and wellness start-up.

"I thought HuffPost would be my last act. But I've decided to step down as HuffPost's editor-in-chief to run my new venture, Thrive Global," she tweeted yesterday.

Greek-born Ms Huffington, 66, who launched her original American website in 2005 and sold it to Internet giant AOL for US$315 million (S$424 million) in 2011, said Thrive Global aims "to change the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is a necessary price for success".

Thrive Global, which will offer services to companies to improve the well-being of their employees, recently closed a Series A funding round ahead of a launch in the fall.

The Huffington Post, a liberal online news aggregator and blog which now operates in 10 languages and has a user base of over 200 million, was among the first major news groups to benefit from consumer interest in online information.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE