Sources: Amazon is paying $20M to $25M a year to use NYT's editorial content in a multi-year deal for its AI platforms, which is ~1% of NYT's total 2024 revenue
The multiyear deal lets Amazon use content from the Times's news and cooking sections and the Athletic
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported price puts a figure on the NYT-Amazon licensing agreement announced in May, which covered Times news and cooking material as well as The Athletic across Amazon customer experiences.
It also extends a developing publisher-AI marketplace: Apple had previously explored multiyear news-content deals for generative AI training, while industry coverage has flagged unresolved questions around deal selection and long-run costs.
First-order effects
- Amazon gains licensed access to specified NYT, cooking, and Athletic editorial material for its AI platforms under a multiyear arrangement.
- NYT adds $20M-$25M in annual licensing revenue—reported as roughly 1% of its 2024 revenue—and establishes a disclosed benchmark for this package of editorial rights.
Second-order effects
- The disclosed range gives other publishers and AI buyers a more concrete reference point in negotiations, though pricing will still depend on content scope, rights, and distribution uses.
- For Amazon, licensed publisher content becomes a recurring input cost alongside model and product investment, sharpening the economic case for deploying it across customer-facing AI experiences.
Third-order effects
- If comparable agreements proliferate, premium publishers may increasingly treat archives and ongoing editorial output as a licensable AI input rather than relying solely on traffic or advertising distribution.
- The market could separate into publishers able to negotiate direct AI licenses and those with less bargaining power, while questions over rights scope, attribution, and renewal economics remain unresolved.
The trend: AI companies are moving from ad hoc access to publisher material toward recurring, negotiated content-supply relationships for training and product experiences.