The founders, journalists Bobbie Johnson and Jim Giles, funded the project by raising $140,000 on Kickstarter in March 2012.

[1] Following the successful campaign, an initial release of the online magazine was designed by Paul Lloyd and Jeremy Keith of Clearleft, and developed by Phil Gyford.

[3] In April 2013, Johnson and Giles announced that Matter had been acquired by Medium, a new publishing platform established by Twitter founder Ev Williams.

[5] In February 2016, Matter became the first digital publication to win a National Magazine Award in the prestigious category of reporting, for Joshua Hammer's story on the Ebola epidemic, "My Nurses Are Dead, and I Don't Know If I'm Already Infected.

As part of its expansion into Matter Studios, under co-chief creative officers Mark Lotto and Hillary Frey, it produces digital journalism, podcasts, books, live events, documentaries, and web series.