New York Times Gets New AI Partner For $20-$25 Million

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) has agreed to pay The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) between $20 million and $25 million annually under a multiyear content licensing deal, according to people familiar with the terms.

Though the companies announced the agreement in May, this is the first time financial details have come to light.

The annual payout represents nearly 1% of the Times’s 2024 revenue and offers insight into how major tech firms are valuing journalism in an AI-driven information landscape, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Also Read: Google’s AI Search – A Double-Edged Sword for Publishers Like the Atlantic

The deal gives Amazon access to a wide range of New York Times content including material from its core news site, cooking section, and The Athletic, which Amazon can use to train AI models and power features like Alexa responses, including summaries or snippets from Times stories.

This marks Amazon’s first AI-related licensing agreement with a news publisher and The Times’s first deal with a tech giant for AI training purposes, the WSJ writes.

Other AI-Content Partnerships

As AI tools increasingly compete with traditional search engines and draw traffic away from publisher websites, licensing deals have emerged for media companies to monetize their content.

OpenAI, for instance, has signed similar pacts, including one with News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) that could be worth more than $250 million over five years, and another with Axel Springer valued at $25 million to $30 million over three years.

OpenAI and Reddit (NYSE:RDDT) formed a partnership that granted ChatGPT access to Reddit threads and introduced new AI-powered features for Reddit users.

According to the May 2023 report, the New York Times earned nearly $100 million over three years from a deal with Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google that allowed the tech giant to feature Times content across its platforms.

The expanded agreement covered content distribution, subscriptions, and using Google tools for marketing and ad testing. It helped offset lost revenue after Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) chose not to renew its Facebook News tab deal, which previously paid the Times over $20 million annually.

Meanwhile, News Corp also struck a multiyear deal with Google in 2021, estimated to bring in over $100 million annually. Both media companies have criticized Google and Facebook for using news content without fair compensation.

Price Actions: NYT shares are down 0.18% at $51.91 at the last check Wednesday. AMZN is down 0.36%.

Also Read:

• Google Parent Alphabet’s Legal Woes May Create Buying Opportunity: Analyst

Photo by Tada Images via Shutterstock