AI content licensing deals, 2023 to 2026: what has been publicly reported

News and publishing deals#

In July 2023, the Associated Press and OpenAI announced a two-year agreement under which OpenAI would license part of AP's text archive, including material dating back to 1985, in exchange for AP getting access to OpenAI's technology. Financial terms were not disclosed by either party [1].

In May 2024, News Corp and OpenAI announced a multi-year content licensing agreement covering titles including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, Barron's and MarketWatch. The Wall Street Journal reported the deal could be worth more than $250 million over five years in cash and credits; neither company confirmed the exact figure [2].

Platform and social data deals#

In February 2024, Reuters reported that Reddit had struck a deal with Google to license its content for AI training, citing sources who put the value at about $60 million per year [3]. Reddit's own SEC filing (Form S-1) around its IPO disclosed an aggregate contract value of $203 million over the deal terms, with $66.4 million expected to be recognized in 2024, which is the clearest company-reported figure available [4].

Reddit has not broken out which portion of that $203 million came from which named AI company beyond confirming the Google relationship, so other reported allocations should be read as analyst or press estimates rather than confirmed figures.

Stock media and stock content deals#

Shutterstock expanded its existing OpenAI relationship into a six-year licensing agreement in July 2023, covering images, video, music and associated metadata; dollar terms of that specific renewal were not disclosed [5].

Bloomberg reported in 2024, citing Shutterstock's CEO, that the company's AI licensing business generated $104 million in revenue in 2023 and was projected to reach roughly $138 million in 2024 across its agreements with OpenAI, Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple and Reka [6].

Why so few prices are public#

Most AI data licensing agreements are private commercial contracts. Companies disclose figures only when required by securities law (as with Reddit's S-1) or when they choose to confirm a reporter's figure, which is uncommon. That means the numbers above are a mix of confirmed company disclosures and press-reported estimates, and this page labels each one accordingly.

What this means for a business#

A U.S. company considering licensing its own data to an AI developer should expect that reported headline figures like "$250 million" or "$60 million a year" describe large media and platform companies with years of consistently formatted archives, not typical mid-size businesses. Before approaching any buyer, it is worth doing an internal inventory of what records exist, checking what rights the company actually holds to license that material, and removing personal details before anything leaves the building.