Anthropic Signs Its First News Licensing Deal, With the AP

Anthropic has signed its first licensing deal with a news publisher, the Associated Press, two people familiar with the matter told Adweek.

So on election night, Claude showed live results credited to the AP.

Do you run a news site, or block AI crawlers on yours? Then it’s worth a look: it’s the first time Anthropic has given ground to the publishers keeping it out.

What we know so far

• Partner: the Associated Press, signed just before the US midterm elections.
• What Claude got: live election data, shown with credit to the AP.
• Money and length: not disclosed by either side.
• Comment: none from Anthropic, and nothing on the record from the AP.

Until this week, Anthropic hadn’t signed a content deal with any digital publisher, Adweek says, while OpenAI has more than a dozen, including Axel Springer, News Corp and The Atlantic.

Why did Anthropic hold out? In August, media executives told Adweek the company believes scraping publisher content is legal as fair use.

The Decoder adds that Anthropic is close to going public. And Adweek puts the listing just weeks away.

Why Anthropic gave in

Adweek’s Mark Stenberg reads it plainly: an answer engine without fresh news can’t do much on the nights you need it most, like the night of a national election.

Many big publishers block Anthropic’s crawlers, so on a night like that Claude was left citing whatever sites still let it in, which Adweek calls low-credibility.

Fine for small stuff.

Those sites can’t tell you who won a Senate seat 10 minutes ago, though. Election night is one of the year’s biggest nights for search.

Stenberg calls it a digital embargo. It worked here, he writes.

Why the AP, and why it may stop there

Still, the AP isn’t a typical publisher, and Adweek gives several reasons it makes an ideal first partner for an AI company that has never signed one before:

• Most of its revenue already comes from licensing and wire deals.
• It was the first licensing partner for Google and for OpenAI.
• It presents itself as a neutral service, more Getty Images for news than an outlet with a slant.

That’s why Stenberg doesn’t see proof Anthropic has changed its strategy for good. He expects a test first. So do I.

What we checked

We loaded the AP’s robots.txt file on 6 November, and it still blocks ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot from every page on apnews.com.

That’s after the deal was signed.

Then we read Anthropic’s crawler help page. Since 30 October, Anthropic honors a “no AI training” signal based on an IETF draft, though a robots.txt rule that names ClaudeBot still wins.

Want Claude to find your pages without training on them? Block ClaudeBot. Allow Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot.

Why it matters

The blocking worked, at least once. If you’ve shut Anthropic’s crawlers out of your site, you’re part of the pressure that brought it to the table, even if nobody ever calls you.

Don’t wait for a licensing email, though. My read: Claude needed live news for one big night, and the AP was the easiest yes.

So what should you do with your own site? I’d start with these three:

• Write down which AI crawlers you block or allow, and why. If deals ever reach smaller publishers, you’ll want to change it fast.
• Check whether you can split training from answers: Bing lets you separate AI training from search grounding.
• Watch the courts, where Wikimedia has argued that AI answers that copy your work need a license.

The AP deal, as Adweek describes it, is about live answers, and if you’re wondering whether it also covers training on your kind of content, nobody has said.

Either way, Claude was missing fresh, credited news. You make that. You decide who gets it.

Common Questions

Has Anthropic signed a content licensing deal with a news publisher?

Yes. Adweek reports that Anthropic signed a content and data licensing deal with the Associated Press just before the 2026 US midterm elections, its first with any digital publisher.

How much is Anthropic paying the Associated Press for its news?

Nobody has said. Adweek reports that neither Anthropic nor the Associated Press disclosed the financial terms or how long the licensing agreement runs.

Does the AP deal mean Anthropic will license content from other publishers?

Not necessarily. Adweek’s Mark Stenberg expects Anthropic to treat the Associated Press deal as a test before deciding whether to sign licensing deals with more publishers.