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Amazon Web Services is developing a marketplace where publishers could license content to AI companies, positioning itself as an intermediary in the growing battle over how news organizations and content creators are compensated for training artificial intelligence systems, according to a report by The Information.
According to a report by The Information, the initiative would allow news organizations and other publishers to sell their content directly to companies building AI systems, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) acting as the intermediary. The Amazon AI marketplace would sit alongside existing AWS offerings such as Bedrock and QuickSight, signaling that Amazon sees content licensing as a core component of the AI stack, not an optional add-on.
Internal materials shared ahead of an AWS conference suggest the project has already moved beyond early ideation. Two people familiar with discussions told The Information that AWS circulated slides outlining how the Amazon AI marketplace could function as a centralized hub connecting publishers with enterprise AI customers.
For years, Amazon’s AI business focused on selling compute power, chips, and foundational models. Through Nvidia GPUs, its in-house Trainium hardware, and cloud services, AWS became a backbone of AI development. The Amazon AI marketplace represents a sharp pivot: controlling not just how AI is built, but what data it is legally allowed to consume.
“This is Amazon moving up the value chain,” said one publishing executive familiar with the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They don’t just want to rent the shovels for the gold rush anymore. They want to own the toll booth.”
Previously, Amazon struck one-off agreements with publishers, including a reported $20 million annual deal to surface selected news content via Alexa. The Amazon AI marketplace would replace that fragmented approach with a scalable, standardized system designed to onboard hundreds or even thousands of publishers at once.
The timing of the Amazon AI marketplace is critical. Publishers are increasingly pushing back against AI companies over the unlicensed use of their articles, images, and archives. Many argue that AI-generated summaries reduce traffic, weaken subscriptions, and erode already-thin advertising margins.
“The era of scraping first and apologizing later is ending,” said media analyst Sara Fischer. “Publishers want transparency, usage-based compensation, and legal clarity. Marketplaces offer that structure.”
Under the proposed Amazon AI marketplace, publishers could potentially license content for model training, real-time AI responses, or retrieval-augmented generation systems, with pricing tied to actual usage. That model mirrors how app developers earn revenue through platform stores, giving Amazon a familiar and powerful template.
Amazon is not alone. Microsoft recently announced its own Publisher Content Marketplace, intensifying the race to dominate AI content licensing.
Both companies are effectively betting that the Amazon AI marketplace and its Microsoft counterpart wir wins publisher trust wins long-term AI credibility,” said Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton who studies AI adoption. “Model quality increasingly depends on high-quality, rights-cleared data, not just algorithms.”
The competitive stakes are enormous. If the Amazon AI marketplace becomes the preferred hub, AWS could strengthen its grip on enterprise AI customers by bundling compute, models, and licensed content into a single ecosystem.
While large publishers like The Associated Press and News Corp have already secured lucrative direct licensing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, smaller outlets have struggled to gain leverage. Proponents argue the Amazon AI marketplace could level the playing field by aggregating smaller publishers and making their content discoverable to AI buyers.
“Individually, small publishers have little bargaining power,” said a digital media consultant advising regional newsrooms. “A marketplace model could finally give them scale.”
However, critics worry that Amazon’s dominance could shift power away from publishers over time. If the Amazon AI marketplace becomes unavoidable infrastructure, pricing pressure and platform fees could eat into revenues, echoing long-standing complaints about app stores and online ad platforms.
Asked about the report, an Amazon spokesperson said the company had “nothing specific to share” but emphasized its long history of working with publishers and developing new tools for customers. The carefully worded response suggests Amazon is mindful of regulatory scrutiny as it expands the Amazon AI marketplace concept.
Regulators in the U.S. and Europe are already watching how Big Tech companies leverage data and market power in AI. A centralized Amazon AI marketplace controlling access to premium journalism could attract antitrust attention if it becomes too dominant.
Industry observers see the Amazon AI marketplace as part of a broader shift away from the free-for-all data era that defined early AI development. Legal battles, licensing deals, and structured marketplaces are replacing informal scraping practices.
“How good an AI system is will increasingly depend on which publishers it has licensed,” said Mollick. “Content access is becoming a competitive moat.”
For publishers, the open question is whether the Amazon AI marketplace will generate enough sustainable revenue to offset years of declining ad income. For Amazon, the gamble is that owning the content layer will lock customers deeper into AWS.
One thing is clear: the Amazon AI marketplace is not just another product launch. It is a statement that the future of AI will be negotiated, licensed, and priced — and Amazon intends to be at the center of that transaction.
