Digiday tracked all the major AI content licensing deals between tech companies and publishers as a wrap in 2024. We’re doing it again for 2025. These agreements typically allow tech companies to use publishers’ content to train large language models (often including paywalled content). In exchange, publishers get attribution for their content surfaced in AI chatbots or search platforms, as well as access to technology that publishers can use to build AI-powered products and features.

We’d be remiss not to mention the number of lawsuits that have also been filed by publishers against tech companies, alleging copyright infringement. A few notable ones include The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune suing Perplexity for copyright infringement in December. Penske Media Corporation sued Google in September for its AI summaries, the first time Google has been challenged by a major U.S. publisher in court over AI search.

2025 started out with agreements between Axios and OpenAI, and The Associated Press and Google, and ended with new deals from Microsoft and Meta.

Here’s a list of all the major deals signed between publishers and AI tech companies in 2025, in chronological order:

January 15: Axios and OpenAI

Axios signs a three-year deal with OpenAI. The publisher’s content is used to answer ChatGPT user’s questions, with attribution and links to Axios’ site. Axios is also using OpenAI technology to build its own AI products.

As part of the deal, OpenAI provided Axios funding to open four local newsrooms in Pittsburgh; Kansas City, Missouri; Boulder, Colorado; and Huntsville, Alabama. It is the first time OpenAI funds a newsroom as a part of a publisher deal.

January 16: AP and Google 

Google signs its first AI content licensing deal, with The Associated Press. The deal means AP’s real-time news information will appear in Google’s Gemini chatbot.

January 16: AFP and Mistral

French AI company Mistral signs a multi-year deal with Agence France-Presse (AFP). Mistral’s AI assistant Le Chat now has access to the French news agency’s daily production of 2,300 text stories in six languages. AFP’s announcement said the agreement came after “months of in-depth discussions between the two companies.”

February 12: Schibsted Media and OpenAI

Norway-based news publisher Schibsted Media signs a deal with OpenAI, allowing the AI company to access and cite its news in AI-generated summaries. Schibsted Media gets to use OpenAI’s insights and access its new technology.

February 14: The Guardian and OpenAI

The Guardian signs an AI content licensing deal with OpenAI. OpenAI gets The Guardian’s content and agrees to attribute summaries and article extracts from the publisher, while The Guardian gets to use OpenAI technology to develop new products and features.

March 26: News/Media Alliance and Prorata

Trade association News/Media Alliance announces an agreement with AI start up company Prorata, where its members can choose to license their content to be used in AI-generated responses to prompts in the Gist.ai product, with a 50% revenue share model. 

April 22: The Washington Post and OpenAI

The Washington Post signs its first AI content licensing deal, with OpenAI. It allows ChatGPT to display summaries, quotes and links to the Post’s reporting in response to relevant questions. Notably, it does not mention using The Post’s content for training OpenAI’s LLM.

May 29: The New York Times and Amazon

The New York Times signs its first AI content licensing agreement, with Amazon. The agreement will allow Amazon products, like Alexa speakers, to use summaries and short excerpts from NYT stories and recipes, as well as to incorporate this content in the training of its proprietary AI models.

June 6: 500 publishers and Prorata

Prorata announces it has signed up more than 500 publishers to license their content to power its AI search engine Gist.ai.

July 15: Condé Nast, Hearst and Amazon

Condé Nast and Hearst sign multi-year agreements with Amazon to license their content for use in its AI shopping assistant Rufus.

July 30: USA Today Co. and Perplexity

USA Today Co. (formerly Gannett) signs its first major AI licensing deal, joining Perplexity’s publisher program. Content from its more than 200 local publications will be integrated into Perplexity’s AI-powered search experiences, including its AI-powered web browser Comet.

October 30: USA Today Co. and Microsoft

USA Today Co. announces it’s joining Microsoft’s yet-to-be-launched AI content marketplace, which is being developed to compensate publishers for use of their content by AI companies and products. Microsoft’s Copilot assistant will be the first buyer.

November 1: AP and Microsoft

The Associated Press joins Microsoft’s pay-per-use AI content marketplace.

“I would characterize it as very early days and experimental. But we want a seat at that table. We want to be able to input and object when we need to object in terms of both representing the AP but also representing our broader customer base in these conversations — that’s really important for us,” Kristin Heitmann, global chief revenue officer of Associated Press, told Digiday.

November 4: People Inc. and Microsoft

People Inc. signs its second AI licensing deal, with Microsoft. It agreed to a deal with OpenAI last year.

During a company earnings call on Nov. 4, People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel described the Microsoft marketplace as an “a la carte” pay-per-use model, in contrast to the “all you can eat” lump sum deal it has with AI rival OpenAI. “We are very happy with either model — both can be viable as long as our content is respected and paid for,” said Vogel. 

December 5: Seven publishers and Meta 

Meta signs multi-year AI content licensing deals with seven publishers, including CNN, Fox News, People Inc., USA Today Co., to incorporate their content into its large language model Llama. It marks Meta’s first time getting into the AI content licensing game with publishers.

December 10: Range of publishers and Google

Google announces an AI pilot partnerships program with news publishers, including Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Post, among others. It allows the tech company to have expanded access to the publishers’ content and test new features in Google News, including AI-powered article overviews on participating publications’ Google News pages. Google will compensate participating publishers.