Deals tracker
AI content-licensing deals tracker
A running, cited record of the public deals where content and data owners licensed their material to AI companies — news publishers, stock libraries, forums, book and academic publishers, and music rights holders. It exists to make one thing legible: content is being paid for, and the market has prices.
Lawsuit tracker Licensing guides Weekly news
Every row below is a real, publicly reported agreement, sorted newest first. Where a source reported a deal value it is shown and marked as reported — these are public market facts, not fiund’s pricing. Where terms were never disclosed, the entry reads “undisclosed.” We track 31 deals across 5 content types: News & journalism, Music, Books & academic, Forum/UGC, Stock imagery.
Publicly reported deals only. Terms are as reported by cited sources; “undisclosed” where not made public. Reported figures are attributed to their source and may cover a single year or a multiyear total, as noted.
| Announced | Licensor | AI company | Content | Scope | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2026 | News Corp | Meta | News & journalism News Corp agreed to license copyrighted content from its US and UK titles to Meta for AI use, in a multiyear deal reported to run at least three years. | Model training | Undisclosed; reported at up to $50M per year, multiyear | Editor & Publisher · Yahoo Finance |
| Nov 2025 | Warner Music Group | Suno | Music Warner Music Group settled its copyright litigation with Suno and licensed its catalog for a new generation of licensed AI music models, with Suno also acquiring the Songkick concert platform from WMG. | Model training + product | Undisclosed (settlement plus licensing; Suno acquired Songkick from WMG) | PR Newswire · Billboard |
| Oct 2025 | Universal Music Group | Udio | Music Universal Music Group and Udio settled UMG’s copyright suit and struck licensing agreements to power a new, licensed AI music platform trained on authorized recordings and publishing from participating artists. | Model training + product | Undisclosed (settlement plus licensing) | PR Newswire · Billboard |
| May 2025 | The New York Times | Amazon | News & journalism The New York Times signed its first AI licensing deal, letting Amazon use Times journalism, NYT Cooking recipes, and The Athletic across Amazon’s AI products, including Alexa. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed; reported at about $20M–$25M per year | Axios · GeekWire |
| Feb 2025 | The Guardian | OpenAI | News & journalism The Guardian licensed its journalism to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT with attribution and links, and adopted ChatGPT Enterprise internally. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | Press Gazette · Nieman Lab |
| Nov 2024 | HarperCollins | Microsoft | Books & academic HarperCollins became the first Big Five publisher to license select nonfiction titles for AI training, offering participating authors an opt-in split of a reported $5,000-per-book fee. | Model training | Reported at $5,000 per title over three years, split with authors | Authors Guild · Transparency Coalition |
| Nov 2024 | Axios | OpenAI | News & journalism OpenAI partnered with Axios in a three-year deal that funds four new local newsrooms and gives OpenAI access to Axios content to enhance GPT search answers with sourced links. | Search/attribution | Undisclosed; three-year deal partly funding four new Axios newsrooms | OpenAI · eMarketer |
| Oct 2024 | Hearst | OpenAI | News & journalism Hearst licensed content from more than 20 magazine brands and 40 newspapers, including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and the San Francisco Chronicle, to OpenAI with citations and source links. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | OpenAI · CNBC |
| Aug 2024 | Condé Nast | OpenAI | News & journalism Condé Nast agreed to let OpenAI train on and surface content from titles including Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, and Vanity Fair across ChatGPT and the SearchGPT prototype. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | OpenAI · TechCrunch |
| Aug 2024 | Wiley | Undisclosed large tech company | Books & academic Academic publisher Wiley licensed access to scholarly content for AI training, disclosing that it expected roughly $44 million from AI partnerships, without an author opt-out. | Model training | Undisclosed; company disclosed about $44M expected from AI deals | beSpacific · Books+Publishing |
| Jul 2024 | Taylor & Francis | Microsoft | Books & academic Academic publisher Taylor & Francis licensed research content to Microsoft for AI training, a deal that drew criticism from authors who said they were not consulted or paid extra. | Model training | Undisclosed; reported at about $10M (initial) | Inside Higher Ed · The Bookseller |
| Jun 2024 | Time | OpenAI | News & journalism Time licensed its 101-year editorial archive and current content to OpenAI for use in its products, with citations and links back to Time.com. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | Axios · The Hollywood Reporter |
| May 2024 | News Corp | OpenAI | News & journalism News Corp licensed content from titles including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post to OpenAI, which can display the content in ChatGPT responses and use it in its products. | Training + search/RAG | Reported at over $250M across five years (cash plus OpenAI credits) | Variety · Nieman Lab |
| May 2024 | Vox Media | OpenAI | News & journalism Vox Media licensed content from titles including The Verge, Vox, and New York Magazine to OpenAI, gaining brand attribution and audience referrals in ChatGPT. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | Axios · Variety |
| May 2024 | The Atlantic | OpenAI | News & journalism The Atlantic licensed its content to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT and gained access to OpenAI technology for an experimental product effort called Atlantic Labs. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | Axios · Variety |
| May 2024 | Dotdash Meredith | OpenAI | News & journalism Dotdash Meredith licensed content from brands including People, Better Homes & Gardens, and Investopedia to OpenAI, and adopted OpenAI models for its contextual ad product. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed; reported at a minimum of about $16M per year | Adweek · PR Newswire |
| May 2024 | OpenAI | Forum/UGC Reddit licensed real-time access to its Data API to OpenAI for training and for surfacing Reddit content in ChatGPT, and adopted OpenAI-powered features on Reddit. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed; reported at about $70M | OpenAI · CNBC | |
| May 2024 | Stack Overflow | OpenAI | Forum/UGC Stack Overflow licensed its vetted technical Q&A to OpenAI through its OverflowAPI, to improve model performance on coding tasks. | Model training | Undisclosed | VentureBeat · TechRadar |
| Apr 2024 | Financial Times | OpenAI | News & journalism The Financial Times licensed its journalism to OpenAI for training and for attributed use in ChatGPT, and became an OpenAI product customer. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed; reported at an estimated $5M–$10M | Digiday · Quartz |
| Apr 2024 | Shutterstock | Apple | Stock imagery Shutterstock licensed millions of images to Apple for AI training, one of several Shutterstock deals with big-tech buyers including Meta, Google, and Amazon. | Model training | Undisclosed; reported at roughly $25M–$50M | VentureBeat · 9to5Mac |
| Apr 2024 | Freepik | Undisclosed AI companies | Stock imagery Stock-image marketplace Freepik signed agreements to license the bulk of its archive of roughly 200 million images to two large tech firms for AI training, at a reported rate near three cents per image. | Model training | Undisclosed partners; reported at about $0.03 per image | PetaPixel |
| Apr 2024 | Photobucket | Multiple AI companies (reported) | Stock imagery Photobucket updated its terms to allow AI licensing and was reported to be negotiating with multiple tech companies to license its roughly 13 billion photos and videos for training image models. | Model training | Undisclosed; reported in negotiations, with per-image rates reported | PetaPixel |
| Mar 2024 | Le Monde | OpenAI | News & journalism French newspaper Le Monde licensed its content to OpenAI to train models and surface French-language news in ChatGPT. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | OpenAI · Bloomberg |
| Mar 2024 | Prisa Media | OpenAI | News & journalism Spanish media group Prisa Media licensed content from titles including El País to OpenAI to train models and bring Spanish-language news to ChatGPT. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed | OpenAI · Bloomberg |
| Feb 2024 | Forum/UGC Reddit licensed its content to Google for AI model training and for use in Google products via expanded API access, in a deal reported at roughly $60 million per year. | Training + search/RAG | Reported at about $60M per year | AOL / Reuters · CNBC | ||
| Feb 2024 | Stack Overflow | Forum/UGC Stack Overflow made Google its first OverflowAPI customer, licensing its public developer knowledge base to train and ground Google’s Gemini models for Google Cloud. | Model training | Undisclosed | TechCrunch · InfoWorld | |
| Feb 2024 | Automattic (Tumblr & WordPress.com) | OpenAI and Midjourney | Forum/UGC Automattic was reported to be preparing to share public Tumblr and WordPress.com content with OpenAI and Midjourney for AI training, with an opt-out for users. | Model training | Undisclosed | 404 Media · Engadget |
| Dec 2023 | Axel Springer | OpenAI | News & journalism Axel Springer licensed content from titles including Politico, Business Insider, and Bild to OpenAI for model training and for summarized, attributed answers in ChatGPT. | Training + search/RAG | Undisclosed; reported in the tens of millions of euros over about three years | TechCrunch · The Decoder |
| Sep 2023 | Getty Images | NVIDIA (technology partner) | Stock imagery Getty Images licensed its own fully owned library to build a commercially safe generative image model with NVIDIA, and set up a system to pay contributors whose work trained the model. | Model training | Undisclosed; contributor royalty pool for training imagery | NVIDIA · Getty Images |
| Jul 2023 | The Associated Press | OpenAI | News & journalism The Associated Press licensed part of its news archive to OpenAI in one of the first publisher deals, giving OpenAI access to text stories in exchange for access to OpenAI technology and expertise. | Model training | Undisclosed | The Washington Post · VentureBeat |
| Jul 2023 | Shutterstock | OpenAI | Stock imagery Shutterstock expanded its relationship with OpenAI into a six-year agreement to license images, video, music, and metadata for AI training, with a contributor compensation fund. | Model training | Undisclosed; Shutterstock reported $104M in AI-licensing revenue across partners in 2023 | PetaPixel · Yahoo Finance |
Own content and want to license it? See how to sell to AI companies. Building a model and need rights-cleared material? Browse licensed data.
Keep reading
Sitting on content AI companies want?
These deals are the headline names. The same demand runs down the long tail of audio, video, and archives — often with rights already in hand. The first conversation is short and specific.
Talk about licensing