Adweek: Anthropic signs its first content licensing deal, with the AP, as Claude cites AP live data on election night
Adweek reported on 4 November, citing two people familiar with the matter, that Anthropic and the Associated Press struck a content and data licensing deal just before the US midterm elections, the first time Anthropic has paid a digital news publisher to license its content. Claude users asking for the latest polling data on election night saw up-to-the-minute information provided by and attributed to the AP.
Neither side disclosed the financial terms, timeframe or other key details. Anthropic did not respond to Adweek’s request for comment and the AP gave no comment on the record, so for now the deal rests on media reporting rather than official confirmation.
The deal marks a clear shift in strategy. Adweek says Anthropic had not struck a content licensing deal with any digital publisher until Tuesday; the outlet reported in August that Anthropic believed its scraping and use of publisher content was fair use and had no plans for such deals. OpenAI, by contrast, has signed more than a dozen, with publishers including Axel Springer, News Corp and The Atlantic.
Adweek notes the AP is something of a special case, since most of its revenue already comes from licensing and wire deals, and it was also the first publisher Google and OpenAI signed with. The report adds that Anthropic is preparing to go public within weeks.