Media is changing at AI speed: the open web deteriorating, search shriveling, LLMs rising, hyper-personalization surging, old revenue models breaking.
- AI threatens to finish what the algorithms started: wholly upending journalism as we know it. The only certainty: What follows will be as different as the pre- and post-digital eras.
- After studying and experimenting with AI for the past two years, we're placing a series of big bets on how serious journalism can flourish in an AI world.
The big idea: We believe the value of verified, reported, distinctive truth and curated human connection will spike. The yearning for human connection, and demand for human expertise, will only increase.
The big picture: At Axios, we're doing what we did a decade ago when we launched, and two decades ago at Politico: building for the direction that technology and the world are headed.
- We're sharing our thesis — and our plans — to help spark deeper industrywide debate about preserving the best of media in what's to come. Some parts are controversial or based on our own assumptions. We welcome the pushback.
What's next: We assume Einstein-level intelligence will be available on all topics to all people. We envision media consumption shifting to new AI platforms and devices that know us as intimately as we know ourselves. Our lives and minds will be curated beyond imagination. Our knowledge, habits, tastes and work will fully fuse into our screens, or pins, or bracelets.
The biggest threat in this coming reality: Who needs "news" from journalists when their AI tells them what they need to know, when they want to know it?
- Indeed, we assume passive news consumers will find AI curation fully satiating, much like they did scrolling. So general, indistinctive news withers.
- But for serious news consumers — those who routinely seek out high-quality information about their world, passions and community — the demand for human-vetted and human-verified content will surge.
- This holds true for both the consumer and for businesses: They'll need insight beyond what everyone else gets from the machines alone as well as verified news — and human audiences. They'll demand more than AI can give them.
What this looks like for Axios
- Harnessing AI to save local journalism and serve communities. Adding to the power of the 100+ Axios Local journalists coast to coast, we'll soon unveil an Axios Local "Super System" that uses AI to track government action, community data and coming events. This will give local reporters more time for local reporting. We hope the Super System will allow us to hire journalists in hundreds, even thousands, of communities and revitalize a dying industry. This will be among the most consequential examples of using AI to create journalism jobs and do public good at scale. It's as big as the original Axios, and a great example of AI's upside.
- Jumping ahead of AI curation. We're launching specific products based not just on topics but also job titles. We're starting at the top with new verticals for CEOs, CMOs, CCOs, COOs, CFOs and other C-suite executives. All jobs are changing faster than anyone can process. So understanding AI and news through this lens will be vital. Among the most common components of an AI prompt is stating what you do. So our products are designed for today and the coming LLM shift. We'll also keep expanding into new niches, like future-focused space defense, all written by journalists with deep subject matter expertise.
- Shifting beyond the open web. Search is dying and bots are polluting the web. So we've created a new business line, Axios Direct, to sell clean, real-time feeds of our vetted news and information to businesses and others. Companies are building their own LLMs and pay to ingest truly great reporting, opening a new revenue stream that incentivizes quality. We want to help clean up the information ecosystem: Third-party data shows the Axios format and expert-first approach help us overperform in AI results. And we're working with organizations to restructure their own content in more LLM-friendly ways to reduce misinformation about their work and products inside of AI.
- Accelerating human connection. We believe we're on the verge of a renaissance in human connection: The better AI gets, the more people will crave and pursue in-person connection. So we're vastly expanding our global, national and local events, and experimenting with hosting dinners and meet-ups in communities big and small. The Axios Social Club recently brought together more than 1,300 readers in 40 Axios Local markets for dinner with their neighbors. That's the power of Axios in real life.
What won't change: Journalism is only valuable when it's trusted, useful and illuminating. Only reporters can get people to share or leak information, fully understand the nuance of sources and stories, demand accountability, and offer deep analysis based on both data and person-to-person interactions.
- We have a responsibility, even moral obligation, to protect and expand this vital reporting. A world changing at AI speed demands this.
Axios of the future
Axios 2028: Fast-forward two years. Axios is deep into covering the most important topics, jobs and communities, with the widest journalistic presence in America. With boots on the ground everywhere, we're the most trusted human source of human-vetted and human-verified news and information.
- We're connecting people with truth, ideas and each other. We're proving the need and business value of the human layer sitting above and beyond whatever AI brings. And we're doing this while scaling the values and ethics that brought Axios to this new vision and mission. AI is leveraged at every level of every division in pursuit of spreading human-vetted truth.
Axios 2030: Content consumption is fully personalized and fully orchestrated by AI and new devices. The shift from open web to LLMs is complete. The economics and capability allow for mind-blowing personalization: their company, their board, their competitors, their kid's school district, their personal passions.
- Most content is commingled into individualized AI feeds, constantly adapting to match minds and interests. Humans will crave distinction and connection. Axios will serve them inside the LLMs and outside, in physical events and perhaps encrypted feeds beyond AI's reach.
The bottom line: It feels futuristic, even weird, to write about this titanic unfolding shift. But the velocity of change will only intensify. Media, like all industries, has a short window to adapt.