Meta licenses News Corp content for AI in a deal reported at up to $50M a year

What was sold

Meta licensed content from News Corp, including The Wall Street Journal and other US and UK brands. According to Engadget, Meta AI can use the material in chatbot responses and to train its AI models.¹ Mediaweek adds that the license covers story archives and that Meta can retrieve information to answer questions in its AI products.²

The Wall Street Journal reported the payment as up to $50 million a year. Mediaweek notes that these financial terms were reported and not publicly detailed by the companies, and that the deal runs at least three years.¹² Because the figure is "up to," the actual payment could be lower.

How the deal came together

Engadget reported on March 3, 2026 that the Journal had first reported the deal. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that an agreement had been reached, and News Corp confirmed it to Engadget without providing specifics.¹ Mediaweek's article, dated March 5, says the agreement has been signed but does not cite a joint announcement.²

Meta had already signed multiyear agreements with other publishers, including USA Today, People, CNN and Fox News, according to Engadget.¹ News Corp's earlier agreement with OpenAI, a separate five-year deal, was reportedly worth about $250 million.¹ News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said at a Morgan Stanley investor conference that the company was in "an advanced stage" of talks on additional AI arrangements.²

What went wrong or drew pushback

I found no public objection to this deal in the sources reviewed. The caveats are about information. The price, the exact scope and the term come from press reports. The companies have not published the contract, and Mediaweek notes the article does not mention any exclusions, so the limits of the license are not visible.²

The deal also sits within a larger debate about publisher licensing. The New York Times, for example, is suing OpenAI and Microsoft while licensing to Amazon, as covered in a separate entry on this tracker.³ For a reader trying to compare prices across publishers, differences in term, archive access and whether payment is fixed or variable make direct comparison unreliable.

Two comparisons are worth making with care. The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon's payment to The New York Times at $20 million to $25 million a year, and News Corp's OpenAI deal at about $250 million over five years, which works out to roughly $50 million a year if the term and figure are accurate.¹³ Both are press-reported numbers, and the deals differ in scope, so they show a rough range for large publishers and not a rate card.

What it means for companies with data

The Meta and News Corp deal is useful mainly for what it shows about structure. A single content owner can license to more than one AI developer at the same time, with different terms. The buyer gets both a live use case, answering user questions, and a training use case. Archives are included, which means the value of old content counts, not only what is published going forward.

For companies with data of their own, the comparable lessons are practical. Decide whether the license covers training, retrieval or both. Decide whether past records are included. Treat any reported price with caution until the pricing basis is clear, because "up to" figures can hide tiers or conditions. And expect that a buyer may want a multiyear term.

This is a publisher deal and does not mean that Meta buys business records from other kinds of companies. For business data, see /data/ and /buyers/.