The New York Times spent close to $2 billion last year producing about half a million works of journalism, chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien said in a Bloomberg Odd Lots interview published on August 10, 2026. She set that cost base against the compute and talent budgets of artificial intelligence companies and named three conditions any licensing agreement would have to meet. The interview ran for just over an hour and was recorded the day after the publisher reported second quarter results. Kopit Levien described a deal structure with three components: continuity with a publisher's own commercial trajectory, permission with control attached, and price, which she said requires a sustainable and fair value exchange. She said the company has sued three companies and has also done a deal. The suits are against OpenAI and Mic