OpenAI Is Paying Dotdash Meredith At Least $16 Million to License Its Content

The artificial intelligence firm OpenAI is paying the digital media company Dotdash Meredith a minimum of around $16 million per year to license its content, according to public financial documents from IAC, the parent company of Dotdash Meredith.

The figure is a minimum because it only reflects the “fixed” component of the payment and not the “variable” component, which will be calculated in the future, IAC chief operating and financial officer Chris Halpin told analysts on an earnings call last week.

“If you look at Q3 of 2024, licensing revenue was up about $4.1 million year over year. The lion’s share of that would be driven by the OpenAI license,” Halpin said. “So that’s—on a quarterly basis—a good proxy for the revenue we’re recognizing. And then the variable components will be calculated and recognized in the future.”

Dotdash Meredith, IAC, and OpenAI declined to comment.

The multi-year partnership between the two companies was announced in May and is one of several deals that OpenAI has struck with publishers over the last year to train its large-language models on publishers’ content. 

The AI firm has also signed agreements with Axel Springer, Vox Media, Condé Nast, The Atlantic, and The Financial Times, among others.

While the Dotdash Meredith tie-up has been widely reported, the size of the payment has not. In fact, with the exception of News Corp., which is receiving up to $250 million over five years for use of its content, OpenAI has kept hidden the financial details of its publisher partnerships.

The secrecy has spurred both speculation and consternation, as publishers looking to determine the value of their own libraries have lacked public comparables. In January, The Information reported that OpenAI was offering publishers between $1 million to $5 million per year.

The size of the payments is also integral in helping publishers determine whether they want to pursue a partnership or explore alternative solutions. The New York Times, for instance, has sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Without the inclusion of the variable payment, the full value of the agreement is impossible to determine. But taken on its own, the roughly $16 million fixed payment amounts to 3.6% of the company’s $439 million third-quarter revenue.