Wiley confirms it is seeking further generative AI partnerships as its quarterly revenue rises to £296m

Academic publisher Wiley reported revenue increase of 6% to £296 million ($390 million) in its latest financial quarter, confirming it is “seeing a lot of interest” from tech firms who want to license its content for Artificial Intelligence (AI) rights deals.

Last week The Bookseller exclusively reported that Wiley was set to earn £33 million ($44 million) in total for two deals with unnamed tech firms in exchange for licensing its content for generative AI (GenAI), without giving authors the opportunity to opt-out.  

The business’ latest quarterly results showed the positive financial impact of its AI efforts, with learning revenue of $124 million up 14% “driven by a $16 million contribution from a $21 million content rights project for training GenAI”.   

The business’ first quarter results for the financial year 2025 pointed out that if you take out the GenAI project, Wiley’s learning revenue actually declined 1%. 

Wiley also confirmed it is “in discussions with a variety of potential partners” for further AI licensing deals. 

Matthew Kissner, Wiley president and c.e.o, shed further light on the publisher’s approach to AI in an earnings call, explaining that Wiley was “highly valued and well positioned in the evolution of AI” and that it is “seeing interest from other large tech companies and R&D-centric corporates".

Kissner explained that the demand from tech firms for research content in large language models (LLMs) was “in specific disciplines and verticals” and that the two deals done to date by Wiley in this space “involve backlist content, in most cases three years or older”.

He also gave greater detail about how Wiley content was being licensed and its copyright obligations: “The contracts are of limited duration with limited rights and use notably model training purposes. They are nonexclusive, subject to extension, and do not constrain us from pursuing further opportunities. These projects are incremental. They do not cannibalise our core.”

Academic publishers, including Wiley and Taylor & Francis, have been criticised by authors who claim not to have been told about the licensing of their work and have not been given the opportunity to opt-out. Taylor & Francis previously told The Bookseller it is "protecting the integrity of our authors’ work and limits on verbatim text reproduction, as well as authors’ rights to receive royalty payments in accordance with their author contracts".

Wiley confirmed last week that although authors won’t be able to opt-out of GenAI licensing arrangements, they will be paid royalties in accordance with their contracts.

Kissner said: “We see the content licensing opportunity in two stages. The first, as discussed, is participating in the near-term development of foundational models. The second is in recurring licensing arrangements over the medium to long term, as these models and applications come online and as information-centric corporates bring our content into their AI environments.” 

He added: “We believe we have a responsibility to engage with AI developers. Our content is critical to ensuring scientific accuracy and impact and delivering optimal learning outcomes. Therefore, AI models should be trained on high-quality authoritative content like Wiley’s. At the same time, we’re being very selective about choosing when and how to partner with AI companies. We are careful to pick the right partners and to adhere to a strict set of principles around AI.” 

Kissner said content licensing was “not a new or AI-specific activity for us“ and emphasised that “the rights of authors and other copyright holders must be protected.”