Anthropic Strikes Its First Licensing Deal, With the AP, for Election Coverage

This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.

If, by chance, you opened Claude on Election Night and asked it for an update on the latest polling data, you would have been treated to a novel sight: up-the-minute information, provided by and attributed to the Associated Press.

This new development was the result of a content and data licensing deal struck between the two organizations, which was struck just before the midterm elections, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment, and the AP did not provide a comment on the record. The financial specifics of the arrangement, as well as other critical details, such as its timeframe, were not disclosed by either party.

Nonetheless, the deal marks a dramatic evolution in strategy for Anthropic, as the artificial intelligence firm behind Claude had not, until Tuesday, struck a content licensing deal with any digital publisher.

In that regard, Claude differed dramatically from its primary competitor, ChatGPT, whose parent company OpenAI has negotiated more than a dozen content licensing deals with major publishers, including Axel Springer, News Corp., and The Atlantic, among others.

In fact, the reluctance by Anthropic to engage in any kind of content licensing discussion had become such a subject of intrigue within the industry that I explored the situation in August, in one of my more literally titled pieces.

At the time, digital media executives told me that the company genuinely believes that its scraping and use of publisher content is legally permissible under the concept of fair use. As such, it had not moved to enter into any such partnerships, nor had it indicated any plans to do so in the future.

So why change its tactics now, especially as the company prepares to go public in a matter of weeks?

The likely answer is that Anthropic finally admitted what publishers have long known to be true, which is that an information index without access to up-to-date data is dramatically limited in its utility.

Because Anthropic refused to strike content licensing deals with major news publishers, it lacked access to the kind of credible, timely reporting that consumers turn to in key moments like an election cycle.

Without the ability to intake data from premium publishers, whose websites block its crawlers, Anthropic could only cite what AI researcher Deana Burke calls the “unlocked web.” These low-credibility sites might serve as sufficient sources of information for low-stakes queries, but they cannot tell a user which politician won a Senate seat 10 minutes ago.

As such, Anthropic was facing down the prospect of its users finding its platform to be nearly useless as a source of real-time information on one of the most important days of the year for search queries.

Publishers had been blocking Anthropic, as well as other answer engines, to produce this very outcome. The tactic is effectively a digital embargo, with news outlets withholding their content in hopes of bringing answer engines to the bargaining table to strike licensing deals. And in this limited instance, the strategy worked.

Of course, the AP is a bit of an exceptional case: It generates the vast majority of its revenue via licensing and wire deals with other publishers, so much of its business is structured around striking these kinds of tie-ups already. The AP was also the first publisher with whom Google and OpenAI signed licensing agreements.

The AP also has the advantage of being a canonically non-partisan outlet—it positions itself as more of a service, like Getty Images for information, than a standard publisher, which often has an editorial slant one way or the other. For these reasons, the AP makes for an ideal partner for an AI firm looking to test out licensing opportunities.

This limited foray into licensing is by no means an indicator that Anthropic has irrevocably changed its licensing strategy. In all likelihood, the company will use the data from this experiment to determine whether it wants to go further down this path or not.

But the deal does make a compelling case for the value of credible, real-time information to answer engines. And if Anthropic wants to stake its claim as the dominant platform in the ecosystem, it is hard to imagine how it does so without premium publishers.

Talking Heds

Closing on OpenWeb (SCOOP): The venture firm Savage Ventures is preparing a bid of between $60 million to $70 million to acquire OpenWeb, the bankrupt Israeli adtech firm once worth $1.5 billion, according to an inside source. A distressed sale would be the latest grim chapter in the long, sordid saga of OpenWeb, whose fortunes have fallen precipitously in recent years. The startup, whose 2021 Series E received investment from The New York Times, helps publishers monetize their comments sections, a commercial model whose appeal is dwindling as the open web continues to contract. Still, its data, publisher relationships, and on-page real estate make it a reasonable acquisition target at just 4% of its high watermark valuation.

Creator Agency Consolidation (EXCLUSIVE): On Thursday, the social-first agency LV8 merged with its sister company Mirage Digital. Following the merger, the newly combined firm raised a round of equity funding “in the high eight figures” from Velocity Capital, according to LV8 chief executive Griffin Haddrill. The deal is the latest in a series of creator and social-centric tie-ups in the agency space in recent weeks. In September alone, the social agency SAMY acquired the influencer shop Get Engaged, and Billion Dollar Boy bought the business-to-business influencer marketing agency Creator Authority. In the first half of 2026, there were 70 creator economy M&A transactions, up 23% year-over-year, according to Quartermast Advisors, and agencies have accounted for around a fifth of those. Expect more from me on this front in the next week or two!

People Inc. People: On Thursday, People Inc. laid off around 6% of its staff, a total of nearly 200 employees, according to an internal memo I obtained. The cuts primarily affected its print and “legacy digital” businesses, the latest in a growing constellation of data points that reflect the diminishing commercial prospects of the open web. Of course, People Inc. is not alone in its reductions: Netflix, Disney, and Skydance, among others, have all enacted layoffs ahead of the holiday season.

Quote/Unquote

On Thursday, at the Creator Marketing Summit in New York, I spoke on-stage with Tyler Stewart, the head of marketing and creative partnerships at Gopuff. Before the panel, I asked Tyler about the news that had broken earlier that morning, that two of his competitors—Instacart and Doordash—planned to combine in a $17 billion merger.

He offered, understandably, a rehearsed response: that Gopuff is in a category of its own because it owns its inventory and delivers from its own locations, unlike the middleman services its peers provide. That point of differentiation is a cornerstone of the Gopuff business; but another, more salient difference is its heavy use of creator marketing and collaboration.

In June, Gopuff launched a coconut water brand with Tom Brady, and last month Druski took an equity stake in the company as part of a partnership. The tactics stem largely from fiscal responsibility—Tyler said several times that budgetary constraints were a factor in his decision-making—but it also positions the company to capitalize on the growing momentum behind the creator space.

This interview has been edited.

Mark Stenberg: Creators are a cornerstone of Gopuff’s marketing. How did that come about, and how has the strategy evolved?

Tyler Stewart: We’re still a privately funded startup, and we do not have the budget, frankly, to spend crazy TV dollars. Back in the day, our approach was to scale, spray, and pray, but we’ve evolved. Now, we want to go deeper and longer with a core crew of partners who can help us punch above our weight and reach audiences we can’t reach ourselves.

Mark: You also build products with creators. How does that work?

Tyler: Because we’re first party, we have a full private-label business and manufacturing capabilities that we can bring to our partners, which allows us to have a little fun with it. But it’s also more complex. A lot of times, creators don’t know what they want to do or how to do it, so we need to be that partner for them.

Mark: What’s the best example of what this model can unlock?

Tyler: Two years ago for Halloween, we made a massive chocolate bar with Alix Earle. We delivered it to her house in L.A. for her party and generated content around it. Then we made a regular-size version for our whole network, and it was gone in three minutes.

Mark: How do you decide which creators to work with?

Tyler: There are massive celebrities we’ve onboarded thinking, “They have hundreds of millions of followers, they’re going to sell the shit out of this.” And then they don’t. So, can they get us eyeballs we wouldn’t get otherwise? Do they have a level of authenticity, where they actually give a shit about the product? What’s proven not to work for us is the transactional version.

Mark: Druski’s deal with Gopuff included equity. How do you think about ownership for creators?

Tyler: We don’t have cash, so we need somebody who believes in us and wants to ride this wave with us. Druski is hilarious, and we’re going to let him do what he does best. But he has to accept that he’s not getting the check that PrizePicks or T-Mobile would pay him for a commercial.

Mark: You can’t give equity to every creator. What does it take to earn it?

Tyler: Can you help us grow our brand and business? Not everybody can. We put a lot of performance deals in place: Help us get a certain number of customers, and I’ll give you more equity. Why would the business want you as an owner if you’re not helping the business?

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