What do publishers earn from AI licensing?
The short answer
Wiley, the journal and textbook publisher, reported $49.1 million of AI license revenue for its year to 30 April 2026, about 3% of its revenue. Reddit disclosed $203 million of data licensing contracts running two to three years. Those are their own results and predict nothing for your company.
Public companies file their numbers with the SEC, so their filings are one of the few places AI licensing money shows up in writing. I read Wiley's 2025 and 2026 annual reports, its quarterly report for the three months to July 2026 and Reddit's IPO prospectus.
What has Wiley reported?
| Period | AI license revenue | Filing |
|---|---|---|
| Year to 30 Apr 2024 | $23M | Wiley 10-K filed 25 Jun 2025 (prior-year figure) |
| Year to 30 Apr 2025 | $40M | Wiley 10-K filed 25 Jun 2025 |
| Year to 30 Apr 2026 | $49.1M | Wiley 10-K filed 24 Jun 2026 |
| Quarter to 31 Jul 2026 | $13.7M, against $28.9M a year earlier | Wiley 10-Q filed 4 Sep 2026 |
Wiley's total revenue for the year to April 2026 was about $1.68 billion, so AI licensing was close to 3% of it. The 10-K describes the uses as training large language models, point-of-care medical tools and corporate inference models for R&D.
Why does the number swing so much?
Wiley licenses content for AI generally at a fixed price and books it at a point in time, or partly over time, so a big deal can land in one quarter and not the next.
Its 2025 annual report was narrower: most of that revenue was recognized on acceptance.
The segment lines show it. In the year to April 2026, Research AI revenue rose to $33.1M from about $11M. Learning AI revenue fell to $16.0M from about $29M. In the quarter to July 2026, Learning booked no AI license revenue at all, against $13.1M a year earlier.
What does the $19.4 million tell you?
Of Wiley's $49.1M, $19.4M came from content it licensed in from other publishers and paid royalties on. So some rights holders reach AI buyers through a bigger party that bundles their content.
Content Wiley publishes brought in the other $29.7M. The 10-K says Wiley's royalty costs rose too, including higher royalties on AI revenue from the licensed-in content.
What did Reddit file?
Reddit's IPO registration statement (Reddit S-1 filed 22 Feb 2024) says it signed data licensing arrangements in January 2024 with an aggregate contract value of $203.0M. The terms run two to three years, and Reddit expected at least $66.4M of it as 2024 revenue.
That is multi-year contract value. Divide it by the years before you compare it with an annual figure, and note the filing names no counterparty.
What do these filings mean for a private company?
Two things carry over:
- Rights come first. Wiley licenses books and journals it publishes or has licensed in from other publishers. Your records need the same answer about where the rights come from before any price talk, and the rights check starts it.
- Fees are lumpy. A fixed fee booked at one point in time lands in one period. Don't annualize it in a forecast or a valuation.
How to record data licensing revenue covers the booking side, and what an acceptance period is covers the test that triggers payment.
What can't they tell you?
The filings give no price per article, token or record. The revenue lines I read name no buyer and print no terms. Nothing in them converts to a value for an email archive, a ticket history or a CRM export.
A content catalog and a company's internal records are different products. For prices attached to company records, see the deals tracker and the dated roundup of AI data licensing deals.
These figures are what public companies reported about their own businesses. They say nothing about what your company would receive.
How you'd book a licensing fee is a question for your accountant.
Vaultfish helps you run the process. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. If you need counsel who knows this area, we can point you to one. Ask for a referral
