The events business, Axios Live, is growing more than 30% year over year and now generates tens of millions of dollars, according to Cameron. Its sizable presence at Cannes Lions in June will generate 50% more revenue than 2025 and be profitable for a second consecutive year.
None of that, on its own, distinguishes Axios from the rest of the premium cohort. News outlets ranging from Semafor to The Wall Street Journal have introduced exclusive newsletters, and business-facing events have proliferated thanks to their value as physical touchpoints for enterprise marketing.
The harder, more distinctive bet is on addressing the local news crisis, an economic challenge that few news brands have sought to solve, let alone even attempt.
Now, the company is betting that artificial intelligence will change that calculus, and the centerpiece of the gamble is an expanded partnership with OpenAI.
The original deal, struck in January 2025, provided cash that enabled Axios to hire reporters and absorb the startup costs of new markets, along with providing the publisher enterprise access and a large allotment of usage tokens, according to Murphy.
In exchange, OpenAI gets permission to use Axios content for training and access to its feed for retrieval. The first phase funded four cities. The second round, announced this January, will support an additional seven to nine, according to Murphy.
Crucially, the new markets look different from the old ones. Where Axios once entered the largest metro areas with two or three reporters apiece, it is now expanding into smaller, one-reporter geographies—places like Boulder and Colorado Springs—and grouping them into regions, or “local supersystems,” to build awareness and reach sustainability faster.
The shared infrastructure makes this phase of expansion more viable, as the technology costs of adding another reporter to a preexisting system are minimal.
In addition to its funding from OpenAI, Axios is also using its technology to build out a fleet of AI-enabled tools.
Similar to a content-management system, this platform gives every reporter a personalized daily feed of their community’s news and a suite of automations, from data visualization to “localizer” technology that adapts a story written for Austin to run in Dallas. The full version of the platform is expected to be operational in September, when the local team holds its annual retreat.
And while other media brands work to coax staff into embracing AI, at Axios the buy-in has been largely enthusiastic. When the outlet sought 15 internal AI champions, Murphy said, 100 employees volunteered. One reporter used Claude Code to generate 43 versions of a single data chart, one for each community.
“You are either on the bus or you are not at this point,” Murphy said.
Still, Axios is careful to frame Local as an investment business rather than a finished success.
The national business has been profitable for years; Local has multiple profitable markets and is hitting its margin benchmarks, but the portfolio as a whole is not yet profitable. Subscriptions—roughly 15,000 paying members across Local—will only ever be part of the mix; Murphy estimates they may one day reach 25% to 30% of local revenue.
