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Time signs multi-year content deal with OpenAI

OpenAI gained access to Time's current reporting and its 101-year archive for ChatGPT and other products, with citations and links. Time will use OpenAI technology to build new reader products. Financial terms were not disclosed.

NEW YORK, June 27, 2024 - Time announced a multi-year content deal and strategic partnership with OpenAI to bring its journalism into OpenAI products, including ChatGPT. OpenAI will have access to Time's current reporting and to archives covering the 101 years it has published. Financial terms were not disclosed.1

Terms of the deal

According to an Associated Press report, OpenAI will have access to Time's current reporting as well as its historic archives from the last 100-plus years as a weekly news magazine. The magazine said OpenAI responses will include a citation and a link to the original source on Time.com. In return, Time will have access to OpenAI technology to help create new products for its readers.1

Time's chief operating officer, Mark Howard, said the partnership advances the company's mission of expanding access to trusted information globally. OpenAI's chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, said the aim is to make it easier for people to access news through OpenAI's tools while supporting reputable journalism with proper attribution.1 The AP report did not give a price or term.

Background

The Time deal came about a month after News Corp announced its own agreement with OpenAI.1 A 2025 Digiday analysis noted that earlier OpenAI deals, including Axel Springer in December 2023 and Time in June 2024, explicitly included provisions for training OpenAI's models on publisher content, while later ones such as The Washington Post's focused on displaying content in answers.2 Time was also among the first publishers in Perplexity's revenue-share program, launched in July 2024.3

What it means for data sellers

The Time deal shows the value of an archive with a long timeline. Historical coverage helps a model with context, and a buyer can use it without needing fresh access.

Sellers should note the shift described in the trade press: early deals covered training, while later ones moved toward display and retrieval. The rights a seller can sell, and the price for them, depend on which of these a buyer wants.

This entry is a news summary. SellYourAIData was not involved in the deal.

How the deal came together

  1. Time announced a multi-year partnership. On June 27, 2024 Time said it had entered a content deal and strategic partnership with OpenAI.
  2. Current and historic content were covered. OpenAI gets Time's current reporting and archives spanning more than 100 years.
  3. Citations and links were required. OpenAI answers using Time content include a citation and a link to Time.com.
  4. Time received technology access. Time gets access to OpenAI technology to build new products for its readers.

Takeaways for companies with data

  • A deep archive, 101 years in this case, is a core part of the value.
  • Link-back and citation terms are standard asks in news deals.
  • The seller still pursued other AI relationships, such as Perplexity's publisher program.

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. Time magazine strikes deal with OpenAI (Associated Press via Spectrum News, June 2024)
  2. What The Washington Post's OpenAI deal says about AI licensing (Digiday, May 2025)
  3. Perplexity details plan to share ad revenue with outlets cited by its AI chatbot (TechCrunch, July 2024)

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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.