News Corp expects the first tranche of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion books settlement to arrive in the near term, chief executive Robert Thomson said on the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call on 4 November. On the same call he said publishers “have serious concerns about Anthropic’s unlicensed use of copyrighted content to power its AI tools”.
The settlement is the one a federal court approved in July between Anthropic and a class of authors, covering about 500,000 works at an implied rate of around $3,000 each. News Corp owns the book publisher HarperCollins. It did not say on the call how much of the $1.5 billion it expects to receive.
Business Pill · Complementary Inputs
A short Business Engineer explainer on complementary inputs: why the value of one input depends on the others it is combined with. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss News Corp or Anthropic.
The key insight: As we read it, News Corp is on both sides of Anthropic at once: it expects the first payments from the $1.5 billion books settlement in the near term, while its chief executive told investors publishers have serious concerns about Anthropic’s unlicensed use of copyrighted content. By our arithmetic, the whole settlement is about 6.8 days of Anthropic’s reported October revenue run rate.
Chief financial officer Lavanya Chandrashekar said in her remarks on book publishing: “At this time, we continue to anticipate the commencement of the Anthropic settlement payments in the near term”. Thomson repeated it in the question-and-answer session: “we do expect the first tranche of the $1.5 billion Anthropic’s books settlement to be received in the near term”, adding “And we still have issues with Anthropic”.
Thomson tied the issue to Anthropic’s listing plans. “As for the AI platforms, we note that Anthropic has signaled, with much fanfare, its intent to IPO in the near future”, he said, before the line on unlicensed use, and added that “Consistent with our woo and sue strategy, we remain vigilant about protecting our IP”.
He named the AI companies News Corp does have deals with: “We are glad to have principal partners in OpenAI and Meta and others who appreciate the crucial role our inputs play”. On new deals, he said “We’re in active negotiation on several fronts and those talks with AI platforms are progressing well”, without naming the companies. He also cited the company’s cases against Perplexity and Brave.
Dow Jones, the unit that publishes The Wall Street Journal, grew first-quarter revenue 8% to $630 million and Segment EBITDA 11% to $160 million, the company said on the call. Group revenue rose 6% to $2.28 billion and total Segment EBITDA 19% to $403 million.
At the annual meeting on 5 November, in remarks filed with the SEC in an 8-K exhibit, the company said Dow Jones’ fiscal 2026 Segment EBITDA grew 13% to $663 million and that the team had outlined “a path to $1 billion in Segment EBITDA”. By our arithmetic, that is $337 million, or about 51%, above fiscal 2026.
What the Settlement Is Worth to Anthropic
By our arithmetic, $1.5 billion is about 1.9% of the annualized revenue run rate of more than $80 billion that the Wall Street Journal reported Anthropic reached at the end of October, citing a person familiar with the matter. At that run rate, it is about 6.8 days of revenue.
As we read the call, News Corp separates the companies it licenses to, which Thomson named as OpenAI and Meta, from those it is in dispute with, which on the call included Anthropic, Perplexity and Brave.
As we read the timing, the remarks on Anthropic’s IPO came the same week the Wall Street Journal reported investor doubts about the listing’s valuation; News Corp owns the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, and the call did not link the two.
As we read the numbers, the settlement is small against Anthropic’s reported revenue but News Corp did not say what share it receives, so its effect on News Corp’s own results is not established.
Robert Thomson, News Corp chief executive, fiscal Q1 2027 earnings call, 4 November 2026
“We are a primary provider of the essential ingredients AI companies need to operate thoughtfully and productively”
Three Implications
FOR ANTHROPIC News Corp told investors it expects the first settlement tranche in the near term and said it still has issues with Anthropic.
FOR PUBLISHERS Thomson said News Corp is in active negotiation with AI platforms on several fronts and named OpenAI and Meta as partners.
FOR READING THE NUMBERS News Corp did not disclose its share of the $1.5 billion; the 6.8-day figure is our arithmetic on the Wall Street Journal’s reported run rate.
The framework says: “The transformer is a commodity now; what changes between paradigms is where intelligence accumulates and who can capture it.”
As we read it, News Corp’s call treats its journalism, books and data as one of those accumulation points, priced through licences with some AI companies and through settlements or lawsuits with others. The framework does not discuss News Corp.
What Is Not Established
News Corp did not say how much of the settlement it expects to receive, when exactly the first tranche will be paid, or what its remaining issues with Anthropic are. The $80 billion run rate is the Journal’s report from one person and is not an Anthropic disclosure. Anthropic has not commented on Thomson’s remarks, as far as we found.
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Anthropic’s Reality Check, The Capital Squeeze, & The New World Order
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a growthstory. This week it started being priced as a credit story.
News Corp told investors on 4 November that it expects the first tranche of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion books settlement in the near term, while its chief executive questioned Anthropic’s use of copyrighted content as the AI company prepares to list. By our arithmetic, the whole settlement equals about 6.8 days of Anthropic’s reported October revenue run rate.
A note on sourcing. Quotations and figures are from News Corp’s fiscal first-quarter 2027 earnings call on 4 November 2026 (transcript published by The Motley Fool) and from its annual-meeting remarks filed with the SEC on 5 November. Settlement details are from our earlier coverage; the run-rate figure is the Wall Street Journal’s report. The 1.9%%, 6.8-day and $337 million figures are our arithmetic. The story was first flagged by TokenPost.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
