CANNES, France — To deal with the rise of AI agents shopping on their sites and recoup value, brands have to negotiate deals, restructure their content and take risks — in a short amount of time.
Why it matters: AI companies are profiting from content and data they didn't pay for — intercepting audiences before they ever reach a publisher or brand — and brands need to act now before it's too late, The Atlantic publisher and chief revenue officer Alice McKown said.
Publishers and brands are sitting on content and data that AI companies need — but only the ones willing to block and build new infrastructure will get paid for it, she added: "The value exceeds the risk, but only if you act before the window closes."
Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn moderated discussions with McKown and Ekta Chopra, chief technology and AI officer of e.l.f. Beauty. The June 25 event was sponsored by Cheq.
What they're saying: The Atlantic has licensing deals with OpenAI, Particle and Parallel — but McKown said the real forefront is getting when AI agents access content on behalf of users, not just when humans subscribe directly.
"You can crawl if you have a deal with us," McKown said. "The next thing is we're going to bounce everyone unless we feel" it's worth the security and other issues.
The publication has 1.5 million paid subscribers, McKown said — and is "actively talking about" whether subscriptions could be sold on AI chat platforms.
How it works: Brands can't just repurpose their existing content for AI — the entire structure has to change, Chopra said. AI tools need full conversational context, not keywords, which means lots more content and a different format.
The average search used to be five words. On ChatGPT, it's now 23, Chopra said. "I need a red lipstick" has become "I need a red lipstick for brown skin under $5 — I'm going to France."
"If it's not in the right structure, it's not going to show up on an LLM," Chopra said.
Between the lines: The brands that move fastest will have a structural advantage — e.l.f. already has three internal teams dedicated to agentic commerce, back-office AI operations and workforce restructuring, Chopra said.
Roles are already changing, she added. Supply chain planners who once built complex models now need to think like data scientists.
Content from the sponsor's remarks:
In a View from the Top conversation, Cheq CEO Guy Tytunovich and chief revenue officer Rory Stern said AI agents represent a new type of customer.
"Entity, identity, intent — that's what you need to decipher," Tytunovich said. "Is it a human or an agent? Is it the real person or someone pretending to be them? And what are they here to do?"
General Intuition, an AI lab that uses gaming content for training, raised $320 million in Series A funding at a $2.3 billion post-money valuation and already is working on a Series B round.
Why it matters: The next phase of AI adoption and investment is expanding into the physical economy, according to a Goldman Sachs report shared exclusively with Axios.
Om Malik died on Wednesday, surrounded by family and friends, after a long heart health battle.
This one hurts, even though we hadn't talked in quite a while. Maybe that's why it hurts a bit more.
Om was an early internet entrepreneur who soon became one of the nascent industry's leading journalists. He blogged. He reported. He founded a tech media company — serving as both inspiration and competition for many of us — before later becoming a venture capitalist.
OpenAI is rolling out GPT-5.6 Friday, but says it's limiting access to all three versions of the new model at the behest of the U.S. government.
Why it matters: Washington is starting to treat the most advanced U.S.-developed AI models as products that need government review before they can be widely released.
CANNES, France — AI is for operations, not content creation, media executives said at a June 25 Axios event.
Why it matters: Wielding AI strategically for business partnerships and efficiency can help ensure the media industry's survival.
Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn moderated conversations with iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group CEO Conal Byrne and The Associated Press president and CEO Daisy Veerasingham. The event was sponsored by AWS.
Flashback: The Associated Press was among the first publishing companies to strike a deal with artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.
What they're saying: The AP has three principles for its approach to AI, according to Veerasingham.
"Our intellectual property has to be protected … our intellectual property has to receive fair value …and our reporting starts with a human journalist and it finishes with a human journalist," she said.
Zoom in: "You can use AI to help the production process, the capacity process, and that's a really important part of how you version content for new and different markets," she said.
"The way that we research, develop, produce and distribute our podcast content … is absolutely largely AI-driven today," Byrne said.
Stunning stat: The AP produces "5,000 individual pieces of journalism every single day, and our journalism touches half of the world's population," Veerasingham said.
What's next: Veerasingham expects more multi-year licensing deals — a more comfortable and sustainable business model for media outlets.
Content from the sponsor's segment:
In a View From the Top conversation, AWS global specialists and partners vice president Ruba Borno says the technology "helps us prioritize our time — our only non-renewable asset and our only non-renewable resource — to be used on the highest-impact activities."
The next phase of AI adoption and investment is expanding into the physical economy — factories, mines, utilities and oil rigs — Goldman Sachs says in a report exclusively shared with Axios.
Why it matters: Investor attention is still trained on frontier AI labs, but Goldman argues the next wave of deals and investment will come from deploying AI across the real economy.
For the first time, Uber drivers see charging access as a greater barrier to going electric than vehicle costs, a 13-country survey shows.
Why it matters: Public and residential infrastructure are persistent hurdles for the ride-hailing giant, which is behind on its electric vehicle targets.
But its annual survey has bright spots, with drivers' concerns about EV prices consistently dropping.
New data underscores just how dominant Amazon, Google and Microsoft are when it comes to data centers in North America.
Why it matters: The data gives us a sharper understanding of the dominance by the top operators — including the three that have launched efforts to justify their water use.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is set to get even less "industrial" on Monday morning, when the index of 30 stocks drops Verizon to add Google parent Alphabet.
The big picture: Though largely irrelevant to investors now, the 130-year-old blue-chip index is still the shorthand for "stock market" among many Americans, who gauge the economy based on whether the Dow went up or down that day.
Finance social media was honking over this one: billionaire SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son's latest shareholder slide deck, replete with geese and dozens of their golden eggs.
Why it matters: It's fun — plus maybe a sign of rising animal spirits during a bubbly moment — and it offers some protein-rich food for thought.
Vice President JD Vance headlined an RNC fundraiser on Thursday night in Palo Alto, California, at the residence of influential investor and All-In Podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya, raking in $4.2 million for the Republican Party, a source familiar with the dinner tells Axios.
Why it matters: Vance, who worked in venture capital before becoming a U.S. senator from Ohio, has always had strong ties to Silicon Valley and the tech world.
Washington is racing to sell the world on American AI just as China's cheap and capable models are becoming harder to ignore.
Why it matters: Chinese models don't have to beat OpenAI or Anthropic to reshape the global AI order. They just have to be useful, available and widely adopted.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) are introducing legislation that would let U.S. cloud companies flag suspected foreign misuse of advanced AI computing to the government, per a copy of the bill seen by Axios.
Why it matters: As the Trump administration works out its AI policy and frontier models rapidly advance, there's bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill in tackling thorny AI security issues.
