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Media's AI Pivot
3JUN

News Corp expects share of Anthropic class fund

2 min read
08:55UTC

Robert Thomson said News Corp expected proceeds from the Bartz settlement later in 2026. The $1.5bn covers the entire class, including HarperCollins.

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Key takeaway

The $1.5bn covers the Bartz class fund; News Corp's share remains unspecified.

News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson told analysts on the Q3 FY2026 earnings call on Thursday 7 May 2026 that the company expected proceeds from the $1.5bn Bartz v Anthropic settlement later in the year⁠1. HarperCollins is a member of the class of book copyright owners. The call did not put a value on News Corp's allocation.

Thomson separately discussed News Corp's partnerships with Meta and OpenAI, and negotiations with other companies⁠2. Those commercial agreements and the Bartz class recovery are different transactions. Comparing the whole class fund with the reported value of News Corp's OpenAI deal does not establish a sixfold increase in licensing prices.

News Corp's quarterly filing said the timing and amount of its potential proceeds remained uncertain. It had recognised no gain for the periods ending 31 March. The practical question is how much HarperCollins receives and when, rather than whether News Corp receives the entire fund.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The $1.5bn is a shared fund for eligible book copyright owners whose works Anthropic copied from pirate libraries. News Corp owns HarperCollins, which belongs to that class. Robert Thomson expects News Corp to receive part of the proceeds. He did not say the company would receive the entire fund or announce a new $1.5bn licence.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The settlement arose from claims over books Anthropic downloaded from pirate libraries. The class covers eligible copyright owners of listed books, including HarperCollins.

News Corp's expected recovery therefore depends on the class settlement and allocation process. Its newspaper readership and web crawler-to-referral ratios do not determine its share.

What could happen next?
  • Precedent

    The $1.5bn figure sets the first publicly named benchmark for lump-sum AI content settlements, giving mid-tier publishers a cited anchor in bilateral negotiations with OpenAI, Google, and Meta.

    Immediate · 0.85
  • Risk

    If the settlement closes as a private commercial deal rather than through regulatory process, it produces no enforceable floor for publishers who cannot afford multi-year litigation, entrenching a two-tier market by litigation capacity.

    Medium term · 0.75
  • Opportunity

    European publishers with active competition-law or copyright-adjacent regulatory disputes (APIG in France, VG Media in Germany) may use the News Corp figure to quantify damages claims under the EU AI Act and the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive Article 4 opt-out framework.

    Short term · 0.7
  • Consequence

    AI companies will re-price their content acquisition strategies: future training data will be sourced from consented datasets and synthetic generation rather than open-web scraping, reducing future liability exposure at the cost of dataset quality for news-specific fine-tuning.

    Long term · 0.65
Sources:The Motley Fool·Center for Journalism & Liberty / Open Markets Institute
Mentions:News Corp →Robert Thomson →Anthropic →Meta →OpenAI →Center for Journalism & Liberty →The Guardian →Le Monde →Axel Springer SE →Securities and Exchange Commission →Google →Microsoft →Reuters →Reach plc →Wall Street Journal →AWS →DotDash Meredith →Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism →
First Reported In

Update #1 · News Corp expects share of AI class settlement

The Motley Fool· 10 May 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
This Event
News Corp expects share of Anthropic class fund
News Corp expects a recovery through HarperCollins, but the amount is undisclosed. The class fund does not establish News Corp's AI licensing revenue.
Led to
Reach signs AWS pay-per-usage AI licensing deal
The News Corp $1.5bn settlement benchmark directly shapes what alternative AI licensing templates like Reach's pay-per-usage deal are benchmarked against
Occurred 1 Apr 2026
Read story →
Judge reserves ruling on Anthropic class deal
Bartz v. Anthropic correction directly responds to U#1's framing of Thomson's $1.5bn 'anticipated settlement' figure as a bilateral licensing template.
Occurred 14 May 2026
Read story →
Spotify adopts DDEX to label AI tracks
News Corp's $1.5bn Anthropic licensing arrangement set the precedent for AI-content provenance agreements that Spotify's DDEX adoption extends into synthetic-audio labelling.
Occurred 21 May 2026
Read story →
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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.