OpenAI Funds Axios Local Newsletters in Exchange for Training Data
ns123abc · x · 2026-08-20
OpenAI has struck a three-year deal with Axios to explore AI's role in local newsrooms.
Deal Terms:
- OpenAI covers startup costs for 13 new Axios Local newsletters (staffing and technology).
- Axios employees receive free credits for OpenAI's enterprise tools.
- In return, OpenAI can train its models on Axios's published free content.
Context:
Axios CEO Jim VandeHei is testing whether "everything you need in a local market other than the journalist and the journalism itself" can be automated. Notably, despite VandeHei's recent column stating his confident "line of sight is six weeks tops" due to rapid change, this deal commits to a three-year term.
More from Companies & People
- MIT PhD Sharut Gupta joins DeepMind; Isola hails her representational alignment defense talk — phillip_isola · 2026-10-16
- Google DeepMind is hiring a 19-week Student Researcher on scaling laws in San Francisco — savvyRL · 2026-10-16
- 21-person team ships hundreds of PRs weekly with AI writing 97% of the code — rseroter · 2026-10-16
- Cursor's final interview: a desk, a laptop, two days to build anything — a16z · 2026-10-16
- Dev workshops: having attendees build what you didn't teach is the real test — gethackteam · 2026-10-16
- 80% of enterprises this consultant works with run on Databricks, and can't leave — verrsane · 2026-10-16