Axios's OpenAI deal funds 13 local newsletters
The partnership gives OpenAI access to Axios reporting for ChatGPT training and has stirred conflict-of-interest concerns.
Axios has a three-year agreement with OpenAI that supports 13 local newsletters and lets OpenAI train ChatGPT on Axios’s published coverage. The deal is part of Axios’s push to expand its local-news operation.
Digiday said the agreement was signed on 15 January 2025 and initially funded four starter markets: Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Boulder and Huntsville. CJR reported that nine more newsletters were later added beyond those first markets.
CJR also reported that OpenAI gave Axios staff free credits to access enterprise-grade tools, while Axios allowed the company to train its models on Axios’s free, published coverage. News Media Help Desk said OpenAI users also get summaries and quotes attributed to Axios, along with links to Axios articles.
Jim VandeHei has framed the partnership as a test of whether lean local newsrooms armed with AI efficiencies can be economically viable. He asked whether AI could automate everything needed in a local market except “the journalist and the journalism itself,” and he declared that “AI will save local news.”
He has also told staff they must embrace AI, saying they had “no choice,” and described himself as an “AI lab rat.” VandeHei said Axios tries not to get distracted by what other people in media think, and that he does not have much time for AI deniers.
The arrangement has also drawn conflict-of-interest questions because Axios routinely covers the tech industry and OpenAI itself. Futurism said that creates a major conflict of interest, while CJR reported that the deal is silent on an editorial firewall and that other terms were kept confidential.
The broader backdrop is a publisher market under pressure from AI systems that summarise news without sending users back to publishers, according to Brookings. It said that has weighed on traffic, advertising revenue and subscriber conversion, even as bilateral licensing deals have begun to take shape. Axios Local has more than two million subscribers but is not profitable, and VandeHei has said that if individual cities turn a profit within five years, that would be a great success. By the end of 2026, Axios was slated to be in 43 cities.