Deal advisory
Supporting licensing teams in structuring and negotiating agreements with AI companies, research organisations and enterprises, including commercial models, pricing, attribution and visibility terms.
An independent AI licensing consultancy
Maximising revenue, reach and relevance across AI channels for publishers
Muwzo advises academic, STM, educational and trade publishers on licensing works for AI training and inference. We bring expertise in strategy, pricing, commercial models, deals and partnerships.
JournalsBooksDatabasesImagesAudio
Client experience
Muwzo advises leading publishers, collective rights organisations, and creative industry clients including:
- Oxford University Press
- Institute of Physics Publishing
- Royal Society of Chemistry
- World Bank Group
- Copyright Licensing Agency
- Publishers Association
- Publishers' Licensing Services
- Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society
- Picturemaxx
- DACS and PICSEL
Services
Boardroom strategy workshops
Empowering boards and senior leadership teams with the market data, deal benchmarks, product expertise and revenue models to set long-term commercial AI strategies.
Business development
Identifying, approaching and qualifying AI developers, aggregators, and private and public sector enterprises with demand for premium publishing content, building a qualified pipeline of licensing opportunities.
AI product strategy
Helping publishers develop AI-ready products and services, from internal retrieval libraries to machine-readable content services designed for AI applications and agents.
New licensing models
Developing new licensing models for the use of copyrighted works within workplace AI tools and services across academia, research, public health and the private sector.
The market, in numbers
$4.7B
Known AI data licensing revenues since 2023
$0.3B → $1.8B
Annual disclosed deal value, 2023 to 2025
Text & news $3.4B · 72%
Still images $0.65B · 14%
Music $0.4B · 9%
Video $0.25B · 5%
As at October 2026 · updated monthly
From the Muwzo Licensing Revenue Tracker · Discuss on LinkedIn
Sources: Media & the Machine tracker; Marketintelo; CB Insights; press disclosures (Oct 2026). Modality split estimated.
On the record
Pinned · Updated October 2026
Text is now 72% of the AI licensing market
Speaking at the PLS Conference 2026, Ritch Sibthorpe of Muwzo shared the latest data on the growth of the AI licensing market for publishers: $3.4bn of the c. $4.7bn in known AI licensing revenues since 2023 relates to text derived from the publishing industry, with still images contributing 14% and music 9%. Evidence that the market for premium, curated creative-industry datasets for AI training and RAG is flourishing, and growing fast.
About Muwzo
Ritch Sibthorpe
Founder & CEO
- Previously
- Meta
The Walt Disney Company
Warner Music Group - Founded
- Muwzo, 2023
- Headquartered
- London
Muwzo was founded in 2023 by Ritch Sibthorpe, after two decades in senior leadership and licensing roles at companies including Meta, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Music Group.
Today, Muwzo advises leading publishers and collective rights organisations on AI licensing strategy, deals and partnerships with foundation model developers, data aggregators and organisations developing AI platforms across the private and public sectors.