Politico is launching a strategic partnership with a Y Combinator-backed artificial intelligence startup to develop a bespoke AI tool that will quickly summarize its journalism.
In an announcement first shared with Semafor, Politico and Capitol AI said they’ve formed a partnership to develop a tool for subscribers to Politico Pro, the outlet’s premium subscription platform that covers policy, state and federal legislation, and congressional committee hearings in granular detail. The new AI tool, which will roll out later this year, will aim to help users quickly pull together information from Politico and Politico Pro content to create comprehensive reports on topics instantly.
“Capitol AI is coming out of the YC Summer 24 batch with stellar traction, and its partnership with Politico demonstrates the value that publishers can deliver when they embrace the future of content instead of burying their heads in the sand,” Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, said in a statement first shared with Semafor.
Both companies emphasized that the tool relies entirely on Politico reporting, and is meant to serve as an additive product for Pro users. During a demonstration for Semafor of a version of the product that will eventually be built within Politico Pro, Capitol AI CEO Shaun Modi showed how the tool highlights citations from Politico’s journalism.
“This is not about automating journalism, this is about unlocking the end user — the lobbyist, the government affairs person at Uber, at SpaceX, at Airbnb to better understand what’s happening in Washington, what regulations are coming, and make business decisions quickly,” Modi said. “Instead of having to parse through huge volumes of bill text, you can put in a prompt and our generative model looks through that rich information from Politico and gives you a report back.”
The move is the latest partnership between a news publisher and an AI company, but it’s unusual in one key way: The idea is to create a product specifically for Politico and increase its relevance for current Politico Pro subscribers, rather than license Politico’s content to assist or train an external AI model. The tool will be hosted inside the Politico Pro dashboard.
After initial hesitation about AI, Politico’s parent company, Axel Springer, has enthusiastically embraced large language model technology. In 2023, the company announced a deal with OpenAI that would generate “tens of millions” in revenue by letting OpenAI use Politico and Business Insider content to train models and offer answers to user prompts via ChatGPT.
In a call last week, Rachel Loeffler, Politico’s executive vice president and general manager, said that the Politico Pro partnership is separate, but that Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner has encouraged its subsidiaries to explore how to develop and use AI within their media organizations. Earlier this year, Politico rolled out AI-generated bill summaries for Pro subscribers.
“We really see AI as the next phase of digital transformation, so we have a commitment to figuring out how to harness the power of AI in conjunction with our goals and values,” Loeffler said.
