Exclusive: OpenAI renews $5M bet on local news
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OpenAI is renewing its investment in the American Journalism Project by committing an additional $5 million in funding and $3 million in tech credits to the organization over the next two years, executives told Axios.
Why it matters: OpenAI sees this partnership and its broader set of deals with local news companies as mission-driven endeavors, not commercial imperatives, per Tom Rubin, chief of intellectual property and content.
- "These partnerships are consistent with our mission and have demonstrated great success," he tells Axios. "We're committed to them because they demonstrate that the technology can benefit society."
Catch up quick: The new investment builds on OpenAI's original 2023 deal with AJP, which included $5 million in funds and another $5 million in tech credits.
- That partnership helped launch AJP's Product & AI Studio, an initiative that enables nonprofit local news organizations to create AI-powered products and workflows.
Zoom in: The initial deal between the two organizations saw AJP delivering direct funding grants to 31 of its 50+ portfolio organizations across 38 states.
- With the new, two-year deal, AJP plans to expand direct funding to more of its newsroom partners, while also broadening access to ChatGPT's enterprise products, per AJP CEO Sarabeth Berman.
Between the lines: The first phase of AJP's partnership with OpenAI focused on helping newsrooms and their leaders develop fluency with the technology to understand where it could best support their work.
- "Deploying AI effectively is ultimately a leadership challenge," Berman says. "News organizations really have to think about how they smartly integrate these technologies in ways that have good policies, have humans in the lead and support the journalistic quality of the news organizations."
- Member newsrooms built products and tools to support development and editorial processes, such as fundraising and donor communications, data analysis, translation work, and civic information tools for readers.
- Moving forward, AJP hopes to expand its Product & AI Studio beyond experimentation within individual newsrooms to implementation of shared products and infrastructure that can benefit nonprofit local newsrooms at scale.
Zoom out: AJP is one of several local news deals struck by OpenAI in the past few years.
- The tech giant launched an AI collaborative and fellowship program with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism in 2024 that provides grants, engineering support and AI credits to several big metro publishers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Minnesota Star Tribune and the Seattle Times.
- It struck a deal with Axios in 2025 to fund the expansion of Axios Local to several new markets, including Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Boulder and Huntsville.
- It provides AI grants, training and support to local and regional newsrooms that are part of WAN-IFRA, a global news trade group.
The big picture: OpenAI has invested heavily in brokering licensing agreements with local news organizations while it simultaneously faces lawsuits over copyright infringement from newspapers such as the New York Times and eight newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital.
- Other AI firms have been less aggressive about brokering licensing deals with news organizations.
- Some, such as OpenAI-backer Microsoft, are eyeing deals that would compensate publishers on a per use basis.
Disclosure: Axios and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access part of Axios' story archives while helping fund the launch of Axios into several local cities and providing some AI tools. Axios has editorial independence.
