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Le Monde signs multi-year deal with Perplexity that excludes model training

Le Monde announced a multi-year agreement letting Perplexity use its journalism to answer questions, with links to the original articles. Unlike Le Monde's 2024 OpenAI contract, the deal does not allow Perplexity to train its model on the content. Amounts were not disclosed.

May 14, 2025 Le Monde announced a multi-year agreement letting Perplexity use its journalism to answer questions, with links to the original articles.1

Terms of the deal

The agreement is multi-year, with amounts and duration not disclosed.1 Perplexity's answers use Le Monde's editorial content, including recent articles, and each answer links to the source article.1

Unlike Le Monde's 2024 contract with OpenAI, this deal does not authorize Perplexity to train its engine on Le Monde's content.1

Background

Le Monde had an earlier contract with OpenAI, signed in 2024.1 Der Spiegel, Prisa (El Pais) and Time magazine had made similar deals with Perplexity, and the Wall Street Journal and New York Post sued Perplexity in October 2024.1

Press Gazette's tracker lists the deal under May 14, 2025 as content used for answers with links, excluding training, and including access to Sonar.2

What it means for data sellers

Sellers can separate answer-grounding rights from training rights in the same contract. The public record shows the structure but not the price.

How the deal came together

  1. Announcement. Le Monde announced the agreement on May 14, 2025.
  2. Answers, not training. Perplexity's answers draw on Le Monde's editorial content, but the contract does not allow Perplexity to train its model on it.
  3. Payment and technology. The deal pays Le Monde for referencing its content and gives Le Monde access to Perplexity's Sonar function to search its own content.
  4. Conditions. Le Monde said the Sonar integration is contractually subject to the reliability and relevance of the answers.

Takeaways for companies with data

  • A publisher can license content for answers while refusing training rights, and still be paid.
  • Payment tied to referencing content differs from a training license, even when the amount is not public.
  • Technology access can be part of the consideration, alongside cash.

Sources

Every numbered reference above points to an entry here. Figures come from these pages as of the date shown at the top of the article. Where a source reports a number it got from unnamed people, the text says so.

  1. Le Monde signe un accord avec Perplexity (LeMondeInformatique, May 2025)
  2. News publisher AI deals and lawsuits tracker (Press Gazette, 2026)

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About the AI Data Deal Tracker

SellYourAIData tracks publicly reported sales and licenses of data to AI companies, with the price, terms and sources for each. Entries are checked against public reporting and updated as deals change. SellYourAIData was not involved in this deal. To ask what your company's data could sell for, get a free valuation. To report a deal, contact us.