News Corp Strikes $50 Million AI Deal With Meta
While rival publishers drain resources in courtrooms, News Corp turns its journalism into a $50 million-a-year revenue stream — and signals the market for news content has arrived.
While rival publishers burn money on copyright lawsuits, News Corp is cashing checks. The company has secured a licensing deal with Meta worth up to $50 million annually — and it is just getting started.
The Wall Street Journal reported March 3 that Meta agreed to pay up to $50 million per year for access to News Corp's U.S. and U.K. journalism. The deal runs at least three years, putting a potential $150 million on the table. It is News Corp's second major AI licensing agreement.
Combined with a $250 million deal News Corp struck with OpenAI in May 2024, the company now earns up to $100 million a year from AI licensing alone — a lifeline arriving precisely as digital advertising continues to drag across the industry.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson laid out the logic bluntly at a Morgan Stanley technology conference March 2, framing his company's journalism as the essential raw material powering AI systems that cannot function without real-time, reliable information.
"We're essentially an input company," Thomson told investors. "In the way that semiconductors are an input, in the way data centres are an input, in the way that energy is an input."
Thomson drew a sharp line between News Corp's commercial strategy and the litigation path chosen by other publishers. His formula is direct: offer a partnership first, then litigate if refused.
"We'll woo you, we'd like you to be our partner, but if you're stealing our stuff we are going to sue you," Thomson said. "If you look at a lot of the bots coming in and scraping our stuff and they're using our material in new AI verticals, we're coming for you."
News Corp filed a copyright lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity in October 2024. The New York Times followed with its own suit against Perplexity in December 2025. Neither publisher has reported licensing revenue from the company.
Meta's deal with News Corp fits into a wider push by the social media giant to lock in licensed content. In December 2025, Meta announced agreements with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, People Inc., and several European publishers to feed its AI chatbot — terms undisclosed. The partnerships let Meta AI deliver news-related responses with links back to publisher articles, a feature now live across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
At the March 2 conference, Thomson pressed the competitive advantage News Corp holds over AI systems that can only mine the past.
"AI is essentially retrospective," Thomson said. "It's based on pre-existing patterns. If you want to be contemporary, you have to have immediacy. As we are a company that's minute after minute, hour after hour creating fresh immediacy, we have something that these companies not only want, but need."
The Meta agreement covers News Corp's major U.S. and U.K. titles, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. Australian publications — the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun among them — fall outside the deal's scope.
The financial terms dwarf the industry norm. Proactive Investors estimates the average publicly disclosed AI licensing agreement at roughly $24 million — News Corp is commanding more than double that per deal.
Thomson said at the Morgan Stanley conference that the company is "at an advanced stage" with additional negotiations. Rumors link News Corp to talks with Google, though no deal has been confirmed. More agreements would widen a revenue gap that already separates News Corp from nearly every other publisher.
The strategy reframes what journalism is worth in the AI era. Rather than waiting for regulators to intervene or governments to subsidize struggling newsrooms, News Corp treats its reporting as intellectual property commanding a market price — and the market is paying.
News Corp shares have climbed with each licensing announcement, investors voting with their capital. For publishers still choosing courtrooms over conference tables, the market signal could not be louder.