Meta (META) has signed an artificial intelligence content licensing deal with News Corp. (NWSA) (NWS) for $50M per year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
News Corp. shares rose 1.2% in extended trading on Tuesday, while Meta slipped fractionally.
The deal is set to run for at least three years and allows Meta to use News Corp.’s content in the U.S. and U.K., the news outlet added, citing people familiar with the matter. News Corp. is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal and other financial media outlets, including MarketWatch, Investors Business Daily, and Barron’s. It also houses the New York Post, The Times, and others.
News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson seemed to hint at the deal on Monday at an investment conference. “Now, as I say, we have one very public horizontal deal,” Thomson said at the Morgan Stanley conference, referring to AI as an opportunity for the company. “It’s fair to say we’re at an advanced stage with other negotiations, and you won’t have too long. Stay tuned, but you won’t have too long to wait.”
In 2024, News Corp. signed a multi-year content licensing deal with artificial intelligence company OpenAI (OPENAI) that was reported to be worth $250M over a span of five years. News Corp. also signed a deal with Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) that year that has seen the tech giant pay the publisher a reported $6M annually to develop AI content and products.
OpenAI has signed deals with several publishers, including Axel Springer—the parent company of Business Insider, French newspaper Le Monde, Spanish media conglomerate Prisa Media, Associated Press, the American Journalism Project, and NYU.
Late last year, it was reported that Meta held talks with numerous news publishers about licensing their articles for use in its AI products, including Axel Springer, Fox (FOX) (FOXA), and News Corp.
In October 2024, Meta announced an AI content-licensing deal with Reuters.
The New York Times Company (NYT) sued Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI for copyright infringement in December 2023, alleging the tech companies illegally used the newspaper’s content to train artificial intelligence models.