AI · ECOSYSTEM / INTEL

The AI deals reshaping search.

42 tracked deals, each one dated and sourced, with how much signal is left in it. The same deals feed the curve and the signals feed.

Cite this

Last updated 2026-08-17

Bell, K. (2026). AI search partnership map and signal decay. SEO Comms Clinic. https://seocommsclinic.com/ecosystem

How this is built

Free to use with attribution. Link back to this page and keep the date on the number.

Signals layerOverlay FREDA signal decay onto each deal

Size = deal value (USD M)Colour = sector Confirmed Reported Projected (off by default)

Click any bubble to inspect

Signal Decay Analysis

Tracking 42 ecosystem signals across their lifecycle. Hover a curve to focus, click to open the brief.

25 High15 Fading2 Dead

In focus

OpenAI × IBM

The consultancies are now the delivery channel for frontier models.

Strength90%

Time to dead70w

Open brief →

Freshest right now

Perplexity × Gannett/USA Today
Five tech giants are now competing for publisher content.
0w old · 64% signal
Shutterstock × OpenAI
The first deal where an AI company paid the contributors whose work trained the model.
0w old · 64% signal
Runway × Lionsgate
A major studio decided licensing its catalogue pays better than suing the models trained on it.
0w old · 72% signal
Wiley × OpenAI
Academic journals became the source layer under any answer a doctor, lawyer, or engineer will trust.
0w old · 80% signal
Reddit × Google
Google paid $60M/yr to make Reddit the most-cited source on commercial intent.
0w old · 67% signal

About to expire, burn this week

Nothing dying in the next 6 weeks.

OpenAI bought the editorial signals Google priced highest.
OpenAI × Dotdash Meredith · 0w since announce
Signal strength38%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~15 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
For any lifestyle or how-to brand, open with: 'The AI answer in your category is now written in Dotdash Meredith's voice by default.' Then kill the next 'best of' content plan and replace it with a primary-research + entity-authority scope.
Microsoft got to a trade publisher before OpenAI did.
HarperCollins × Microsoft · 0w since announce
Signal strength41%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~19 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
For publishing, professional-services and education clients, open with: 'Copilot's non-fiction answers are now grounded in a paid HarperCollins feed.' Then reprice their first-party research budget — the cheapest route into that answer surface is publishing the book, or the study behind one.
A major left-leaning European title is willing to appear as a ChatGPT source.
OpenAI × Guardian Media Group · 0w since announce
Signal strength43%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~20 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Perplexity extended its publisher programme into French, other European languages come next.
Perplexity × Le Monde · 0w since announce
Signal strength43%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~22 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
ChatGPT Search needs political reporting readers already trust, WaPo supplies it.
OpenAI × Washington Post · 0w since announce
Signal strength46%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~24 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
OpenAI now buys GPU capacity from more than one cloud, so a single outage cannot take ChatGPT down.
OpenAI × CoreWeave · 0w since announce
Signal strength47%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~28 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Meta is buying back the news it walked away from, and News Corp is selling the same archive twice.
Meta × News Corp · 0w since announce
Signal strength54%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~36 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker now sit inside ChatGPT answers as licensed sources.
OpenAI × Condé Nast · 0w since announce
Signal strength54%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~36 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Lifestyle and consumer verticals are being licensed wholesale, which is where most brand content competes.
OpenAI × Hearst · 0w since announce
Signal strength54%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~36 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Moz picked distribution: Studio 1119 puts the platform inside agency delivery.
Moz × Studio 1119 · 0w since announce
Signal strength46%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~37 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
When a client asks 'is our SEO platform enough?', reframe the question: 'Moz just made a distribution move with Studio 1119, wiring their data into agency delivery.' Then position your retainer in that same shape: the layer that turns whichever platform they pay for into decisions and client-ready calls.
Australia's news bargaining law pushed Copilot into paying for local news coverage.
Microsoft × Nine Entertainment · 0w since announce
Signal strength54%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~41 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
OpenAI is buying Portuguese-language coverage in Brazil before any competitor does.
OpenAI × Folha / UOL · 0w since announce
Signal strength54%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~41 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Billion-dollar headlines re-rated specialist journalism overnight.
OpenAI × News Corp · 0w since announce
Signal strength58%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~41 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Open with: 'On commerce and finance queries, WSJ now wins the AI tie-break by contract, not by ranking.' Then reframe their ranking-drop line item as a citation problem — different diagnosis, different budget line.
Semrush now runs inside ChatGPT, so the audit happens where your client is already asking questions.
Semrush × OpenAI · 0w since announce
Signal strength53%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~43 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Vertical software is plugging its own data into an answer engine, which is how category by category search gets absorbed.
Perplexity × Clio · 0w since announce
Signal strength62%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~45 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Peer reviewed research is being wired into answers, which raises the evidence bar for anything you publish.
Perplexity × EBSCO · 0w since announce
Signal strength64%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~47 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
Every Lovable user gets Semrush data inside the AI app-builder with no separate login or subscription.
Semrush × Lovable · 0w since announce
Signal strength61%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~49 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Perplexity can now pull live Semrush data mid-answer. When your client asks it how they're ranking, Semrush is the source.
Semrush × Perplexity · 0w since announce
Signal strength61%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~49 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Paid financial data is being licensed into answers, so the premium sources are choosing to be inside the engine.
Perplexity × Morningstar and PitchBook · 0w since announce
Signal strength68%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~51 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
OpenAI is paying Oracle more per year for one cloud contract than the whole global SEO tools market earns.
OpenAI × Oracle · 0w since announce
Signal strength47%
Fading, useful context onlyLoses relevance in ~52 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
AI visibility scoring is moving into the CMS.
Prismic × Peec AI · 0w since announce
Signal strength74%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~52 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Use it to move the conversation upstream: 'Measurement is arriving inside the tools your team already writes in. The question stops being what did we rank for and becomes what are we cited for.'
Five tech giants are now competing for publisher content.
Perplexity × Gannett/USA Today · 0w since announce
Signal strength64%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~52 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Open with: 'Perplexity pays publishers per citation — clicks are now a secondary KPI in this channel.' Then pitch a mentions-inside-cited-articles workstream; it is a revenue lever for the publisher and a measurable ranking input for your client.
The first deal where an AI company paid the contributors whose work trained the model.
Shutterstock × OpenAI · 0w since announce
Signal strength64%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~52 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Competitive research now answers itself inside a chat box.
Perplexity × Similarweb · 0w since announce
Signal strength76%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~54 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Name it before the client does: 'The data pull is getting cheap. What you are paying me for is the read and the decision.' Then show a decision you made this quarter that the tool could not have made.
Amazon entered the licensing market as a buyer.
Amazon × New York Times · 0w since announce
Signal strength69%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~58 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
When a client says 'we will just optimise for ChatGPT', reply: 'Amazon just licensed the NYT into Alexa and Bedrock — that is a third answer engine on commerce queries.' Then scope three separate briefs: Google, OpenAI, Amazon. One will not cover the others.
Shutterstock now runs a standing licensed training-data product for multiple AI labs at once.
Shutterstock × Multi-lab (GenAI licensing) · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~59 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Academic journals became the source layer under any answer a doctor, lawyer, or engineer will trust.
Wiley × OpenAI · 0w since announce
Signal strength80%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~61 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Getty sued OpenAI in the UK, then signed a deal to appear inside ChatGPT.
Getty Images × OpenAI · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~65 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Nvidia now owns a stake in the reseller it also supplies chips to, turning GPU allocation into a public story.
Nvidia × CoreWeave · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~65 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
A major studio decided licensing its catalogue pays better than suing the models trained on it.
Runway × Lionsgate · 0w since announce
Signal strength72%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~66 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
The consultancies are now the delivery channel for frontier models.
OpenAI × IBM · 0w since announce
Signal strength90%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~70 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Ask directly: 'Who is writing your AI roadmap, and is search anywhere in it?' If a consultancy owns the programme and search is missing, that is the gap to fill before the next planning cycle.
OpenAI bought the show that covers it instead of licensing coverage from anyone else.
OpenAI × TBPN · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~78 weeksFREDA read: Distribution move
For your client conversations · Distribution move
A player bought reach, channel, or delivery. Frame it as a positioning cue, not an alarm.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Local recommendation moved inside ChatGPT, and Yelp is the review layer underneath it.
OpenAI × Yelp · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~78 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Infrastructure funds are underwriting AI capacity, which means this build-out is being financed like roads and grids.
Anthropic × Macquarie and GIC · 0w since announce
Signal strength80%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~85 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
A challenger cloud won a ten billion dollar contract, so the compute market is no longer three names.
Anthropic × Volta · 0w since announce
Signal strength82%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~87 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
A US court set a per-book price floor of roughly $3,000 for using a copyrighted title in training data.
Anthropic × Authors (Bartz settlement) · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~90 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Anthropic just leased $19B of power like a utility, not a cloud.
TeraWulf × Anthropic · 0w since announce
Signal strength78%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~96 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Use as a setup line when a client says 'we should just switch to Claude for cheaper answers'. Reply: 'Anthropic signed a 20-year, $19B power lease last week — Claude's cost floor is now set for a decade, so pick the model on citation pattern, not price.'
Google paid $60M/yr to make Reddit the most-cited source on commercial intent.
Reddit × Google · 0w since announce
Signal strength67%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~104 weeksFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Open with: 'Reddit sitting above you on commercial-intent queries is a paid distribution deal with Google, priced at $60M a year.' Then ask them to name the handful of subreddits where their buyer actually decides, and scope presence inside those against the next PR retainer.
Amazon put up to $25B behind Claude, giving Bedrock the money to become the second serious answer engine.
Amazon × Anthropic · 0w since announce
Signal strength85%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~105 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Lead with this in the next call — most clients have not processed the implication yet.
Bitcoin miners are turning into AI landlords, which is how you know compute is now the scarce input.
Anthropic × Riot Platforms · 0w since announce
Signal strength88%
High signal, most clients haven't processed the implicationsLoses relevance in ~109 weeksFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Use as a setup line, then hand off to a sharper, more recent deal.
"FT licensed its content to OpenAI" is yesterday's news.
OpenAI × Financial Times · 0w since announce
Signal strength24%
Dead signal, skip itAlready dead as a leadFREDA read: Client threat
For your client conversations · Client threat
Buyers, budget, or citations are being routed away from the client's current setup. Name the risk directly.
Open with: 'Your competitor for the FT reader is now the FT summary inside ChatGPT.' Then reframe the SEO retainer as a mentions-in-tier-1-media retainer — that is the query their buyer actually runs now.
"Publishers are signing AI deals" is last year's briefing.
OpenAI × Associated Press · 0w since announce
Signal strength12%
Dead signal, skip itAlready dead as a leadFREDA read: Market insight
For your client conversations · Market insight
A structural read on where the market is settling. Use as context, not a call to act.
Do not lead with this deal — every client has seen the AP and FT headlines. Use it only as a one-line setup for a fresher move: 'Licensing is table stakes now, the live question is which publishers get cited in the answer.'

Signal Decay Analysis

OpenAI bought the editorial signals Google priced highest.

Microsoft got to a trade publisher before OpenAI did.

A major left-leaning European title is willing to appear as a ChatGPT source.

Perplexity extended its publisher programme into French, other European languages come next.

ChatGPT Search needs political reporting readers already trust, WaPo supplies it.

OpenAI now buys GPU capacity from more than one cloud, so a single outage cannot take ChatGPT down.

Meta is buying back the news it walked away from, and News Corp is selling the same archive twice.

Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker now sit inside ChatGPT answers as licensed sources.

Lifestyle and consumer verticals are being licensed wholesale, which is where most brand content competes.

Moz picked distribution: Studio 1119 puts the platform inside agency delivery.

Australia's news bargaining law pushed Copilot into paying for local news coverage.

OpenAI is buying Portuguese-language coverage in Brazil before any competitor does.

Billion-dollar headlines re-rated specialist journalism overnight.

Semrush now runs inside ChatGPT, so the audit happens where your client is already asking questions.

Vertical software is plugging its own data into an answer engine, which is how category by category search gets absorbed.

Peer reviewed research is being wired into answers, which raises the evidence bar for anything you publish.

Every Lovable user gets Semrush data inside the AI app-builder with no separate login or subscription.

Perplexity can now pull live Semrush data mid-answer. When your client asks it how they're ranking, Semrush is the source.

Paid financial data is being licensed into answers, so the premium sources are choosing to be inside the engine.

OpenAI is paying Oracle more per year for one cloud contract than the whole global SEO tools market earns.

AI visibility scoring is moving into the CMS.

Five tech giants are now competing for publisher content.

The first deal where an AI company paid the contributors whose work trained the model.

Competitive research now answers itself inside a chat box.

Amazon entered the licensing market as a buyer.

Shutterstock now runs a standing licensed training-data product for multiple AI labs at once.

Academic journals became the source layer under any answer a doctor, lawyer, or engineer will trust.

Getty sued OpenAI in the UK, then signed a deal to appear inside ChatGPT.

Nvidia now owns a stake in the reseller it also supplies chips to, turning GPU allocation into a public story.

A major studio decided licensing its catalogue pays better than suing the models trained on it.

The consultancies are now the delivery channel for frontier models.

OpenAI bought the show that covers it instead of licensing coverage from anyone else.

Local recommendation moved inside ChatGPT, and Yelp is the review layer underneath it.

Infrastructure funds are underwriting AI capacity, which means this build-out is being financed like roads and grids.

A challenger cloud won a ten billion dollar contract, so the compute market is no longer three names.

A US court set a per-book price floor of roughly $3,000 for using a copyrighted title in training data.

Anthropic just leased $19B of power like a utility, not a cloud.

Google paid $60M/yr to make Reddit the most-cited source on commercial intent.

Amazon put up to $25B behind Claude, giving Bedrock the money to become the second serious answer engine.

Bitcoin miners are turning into AI landlords, which is how you know compute is now the scarce input.

"FT licensed its content to OpenAI" is yesterday's news.

"Publishers are signing AI deals" is last year's briefing.