Anthropic signs first publisher licensing deal with AP, Adweek reports

Key Points

1. Anthropic licensed Associated Press content for Claude, closing the deal days before the US midterms.
2. It is Anthropic's first licensing agreement with a digital news publisher; OpenAI already has more than a dozen.
3. The move lands as Anthropic faces publisher copyright suits and prepares a market debut.

The latest:

Claude users asking for polling data on election night received up-to-the-minute information provided by and attributed to the Associated Press, under Anthropic’s first content and data licensing deal with a digital news publisher, Adweek reported on Wednesday 4 November, citing two people familiar with the matter. Neither company disclosed the financial terms or the length of the agreement.

Details:

• The deal: Adweek said Anthropic closed the content and data licensing agreement with the AP just before Election Day, making the wire service the company’s first digital publisher partner. The report cited two people familiar with the matter. The financial terms and the duration of the agreement were not disclosed by either side.
• The responses: Anthropic did not respond to Adweek’s request for comment, and the AP did not comment on the record, according to the report. The Verge also covered the deal, crediting Adweek’s reporting.
• The reversal: Adweek’s Mark Stenberg wrote that until Tuesday, Anthropic had no content licensing deal with any digital publisher. Media executives told him in August that the company believed its use of publisher content was covered by fair use and had shown no plans to sign partnerships.
• The rival: OpenAI has more than a dozen publisher licensing deals, with partners including Axel Springer, News Corp and The Atlantic, according to Adweek. OpenAI also said ChatGPT would rely on the AP for race calls on election night.
• The crawler block: Stenberg wrote that many premium publishers block AI crawlers, leaving Claude dependent largely on lower-credibility websites that cannot report who won a Senate race 10 minutes earlier. He described the blocking as a “digital embargo” designed to push AI companies into licensing talks.
• Election tools: Ahead of Election Day, Anthropic said it had added features to give users reliable voting information inside Claude, including a partnership with the nonprofit Democracy Works, KIRO 7 reported.
• The IPO numbers: Anthropic’s updated IPO filing on 2 November showed $17 billion in quarterly revenue against a $23.3 billion quarterly net loss, ahead of a market debut expected later this month, ABC News reported.
• The lawsuits: On 21 October, Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press filed a copyright suit alleging Anthropic built Claude without obtaining a valid licence from any of the news media companies, Press Gazette reported.
• An unusual partner: Adweek noted the AP already draws most of its revenue from licensing and wire deals, and was the first publisher to sign licensing agreements with both Google and OpenAI. That makes it a lower-friction first partner than a subscription-driven news organisation.

Between the lines:

Stenberg assessed that the publishers’ crawler blocking worked in this limited instance, and judged that Anthropic would likely use the arrangement to decide whether to pursue further deals. He left unresolved whether the AP agreement signals a durable strategy shift or a one-off test — a question sharpened by the company’s stated fair-use position in August and the copyright claims now pending against it.

What’s next

Whether Anthropic signs additional publisher deals, its response to the Canadian copyright suit filed 21 October, and the market debut expected later this month.