A few weeks ago, Semafor co-founder and editor-in-chief Ben Smith found himself ensnared in an old-school, journo-versus-journo pissing match on X—the kind of tiresome digital contretemps that was a regular hazard of the occupation during his past life as a muckraking reporter. Ben, who has mostly managed to evade this sort of digital dust-up during the executive phase of his career arc, had promoted a benign-if-unwary Semafor essay noting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had effectively outrun his association with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi—a largely unassailable point, at least on a geopolitical level, given his recent White House visit and Trump’s fulsome embrace. Moments later, however, The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner had a bone to pick. “You would have to be brain-dead to read this piece,” he tweeted, “and not immediately wonder who is funding Semafor Gulf.”

Semafor Gulf, which launched last year, is the startup’s newest vertical and an increasingly important part of its P&L—and also, perhaps, a harbinger of its future. Justin Smith, the company’s C.E.O. and co-founder, had always ostensibly conceived of Semafor as a globally minded media enterprise. Yes, Ben may have uttered that memorable line about the underserved community of 200 million or so college-educated English speakers. But the business always seemed rooted in Justin’s formative experiences in the Lufthansa lounge—as a young salesman at The Economist, his early stab at entrepreneurship with Breaking Media, the Atlantic years (particularly the rise of Atlantic Live and the birth of Quartz), and then his tenure as the C.E.O. of Bloomberg Media. After a career of working for billionaires, Justin understandably wanted the opportunity to chart his own journey, with field notes learned along the way.

And yet Semafor initially, and not always comfortably, shared the DNA of both of its founding fathers. Despite Justin’s own intentional cosmopolitanism, Ben remained a pit bull reporter at heart—the kind of guy a newsroom loved because he didn’t shy from Twitter feuds. When Semafor came to market, in 2022, its very look and feel manifested the occasionally divergent styles of the Smiths. The worldliness—as manifested by all those clocks on the home page, a news bureau in Africa, and a Tyler Brûlé–approved manila-colored backdrop—was mediated by the sort of scoop-driven reportage that had defined Ben’s career. Was this a luxury product? A niche BuzzFeed? Yet another D.C.-inflected media play? Despite the grand pronouncements, it wasn’t always clear in those days.

Three years in—perhaps because of that early indecision—Semafor has distinctly taken on more of Justin’s characteristics. After overhiring and over-raising in those incipient years, the company unabashedly markets itself now as an events-first media company. There’s no shame in that, of course, besides the fact that it’s a clunkier, less stable model that would demand a lower multiple when the time comes. Meanwhile, for students of Ben’s career, it’s hard not to wonder about the company’s fascination with the Middle East—especially for a guy who’s admittedly more Ditmas than Abu Dhabi. Is this just business as usual, or the latest sign that a partnership of supposed equals has been reset?

For his part, Justin isn’t shy about his deals in the Gulf. He recently posted a photo on LinkedIn with the chairman of Dubai Chambers, an Emirati business group, touting Semafor’s partnership with the organization. He also used the occasion of Semafor Gulf’s recent expansion to tout a sponsorship deal with First Abu Dhabi Bank. Arguably, these partnerships are no different than those that Semafor and its rivals establish with the likes of Bank of America or Goldman Sachs here in the States. But in a region where all money invariably leads back to the monarchies, and as U.S. audiences continue to adapt to the American business community’s sudden embrace of Gulf financing, these relationships are bound to draw greater scrutiny. In recent days, for instance, some critics of Semafor’s exploits in the Gulf have drawn my attention to the fact that regular Semafor contributor Tareq Alotaiba is the brother of Yousef Alotaiba, the U.A.E.’s ambassador to the United States.