Rest of World editor in chief Anup Kaphle sent out the following:
When Sophie Schmidt offered me the opportunity to join Rest of World six years ago, I knew we were attempting something genuinely difficult: building a publication that could tell the story of technology’s impact on the majority of the world — the places left out of Silicon Valley’s self-portrait. It was the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and technology was rapidly reshaping everyday life. What I hadn’t fully anticipated was how urgently the world would need exactly that kind of journalism.
These years have been among the most consequential in modern technology history: AI reshaping labor markets from Buenos Aires to Manila, platform companies rewriting the rules of speech in São Paulo and New Delhi, digital payment systems outnumbering bank accounts across sub-Saharan Africa, redefining what financial inclusion means. We covered many of these changes not as curiosities or footnotes to a Western story, but as the story itself.
Helping build this newsroom from the ground up has been the greatest privilege of my career. I’m proud of what our international team of reporters, editors, and fact checkers built together. They joined us to report from places many global publications barely registered. The stories we produced helped readers — policymakers, researchers, technologists, and investors — understand how technology is actually adopted: how people adapt tools to local realities, build new industries around them, and sometimes push back against them.
We built something that didn’t exist before: a publication with the credibility of a flagship newsroom and the agility of a startup. Along the way, we proved there is a global audience hungry for serious journalism about technology beyond Silicon Valley. We expanded our reach, produced award-winning journalism, and kept asking whether we were telling the right stories, from the right places, with the right voices.
Now, it’s time for new leadership to carry Rest of World into its next chapter. I’ve shared with our staff, publisher, and board that I will be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief by the end of April, transitioning into an advisory role. This is a bittersweet decision. I’m returning to Nepal, where I was born, to be closer to my family. I remain as committed to journalism as ever, and I’ll have more to share soon about what comes next.
The publication is in strong hands. Over the coming months — as our board leads a search for the next Editor-in-Chief — I’ll focus on ensuring a smooth transition, working alongside our publisher Gordon Saft, and Christine Glancey and Michael Zelenko, our executive editors who have led our daily publishing across our global newsroom. I leave with full confidence in what they will build.
To our readers: Rest of World exists because of your belief in our mission. Thank you for supporting a publication that had no obvious precedent and for trusting us to figure out what it could become. That trust was never taken lightly — and it won’t be now.
The best of Rest of World is still to come.
Anup Kaphle
