Meet ScalePost, the AI Firm Helping Perplexity Strike Deals With Publishers

Artificial intelligence startup ScalePost is helping firms like Perplexity—which announced its publisher revenue share program July 30—curry favor with publishers that have typically had a fractious relationship with AI companies.  

ScalePost helps publishers monetize data that might otherwise be scraped by AI bots from firms like Google, OpenAI and Perplexity. The platform helps both AI companies and publishers scale up their number of partners, taking care of functions like onboarding publishers to handling pricing and legal matters. It also provides analytics on how publishers’ content appears in search queries, making it easier for them to track and monetize in the AI search engine era.

Publishers including Time, The Texas Tribune, Fortune, Der Spiegel and Automattic have signed multiyear agreements for Perplexity’s Publisher Program, and Perplexity expects to sign 30 publishers by the end of the year.

Perplexity will share ad revenue with these publishers whenever their content appears alongside ads. The search engine is expected to sell ads later this year. It wouldn’t share specifics of the revenue share deal.

Participating publishers also get a free one-year subscription to Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro, which includes access to the company’s developer tools and analytics provided by ScalePost.

“We have the raw data, but ScalePost can make that useful for a better experience, and also make those insights actionable for publishers,” said Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer.

Founded earlier this year by Ahmed Malik and Zach Todd, ScalePost has attracted notable advisors including Rajiv Pant, former chief technology officer at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast and Hearst. Other advisors include Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri; Gideon Lichfield, former global editorial director of Wired; Peter Norvig, former engineering director at Google; and Eric Schurenberg, former CEO of Fast Company and Inc. AI startup TollBit offers similar services.

Co-founder and CEO Malik discussed the company’s growth and the emerging market for AI and publishers, highlighting the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-driven content partnerships.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

 Why did you start ScalePost?

When OpenAI first did a deal with The Associated Press, our ears perked up. We saw three paths where publishers either did nothing with AI, sued AI companies or a third path where they wanted to monetize their content.

We saw Open AI and Google do a few deals, but now Perplexity has come out with this new program, as well, which is very different from licensing deals. So it was that belief and strong thesis that this pattern is here to stay. There are going to be more partnerships between publishers and these new AI companies.

What problem are you helping solve?

We’re helping publishers navigate this new AI world, helping them join either Perplexity’s Publisher Program or maybe just enter content licensing deals with AI companies.

Content is valuable, but AI companies are also needed, and then there’s the issue with fair use—there are all of these questions.

Our platform is designed to scale partnerships between AI companies and publishers, handling everything [from] onboarding publishers to pricing and legal matters, essentially [functioning] as an extension of the partnership’s teams for both the AI companies and publishers.

Consider us the party that provides a publisher with data and analytics on what content and how often their article appears in search queries. And you can’t ignore bots [by AI companies]. We also have a product—it’s like a building block for publishers that are focused on tracking and managing bot traffic.

Top 30 publishers are already using this tool to detect and block unwanted bot activity, but also to gain valuable analytics on their website traffic, like who is visiting their site, and why. Publishers really care about traffic, and this tool helps understand how bots are behaving.

Are you raising funds and, if so, how much?

We have raised seed funds but are not yet ready to share the details.

How do you plan to grow?

We’re simply seeing a need from the AI side for partnerships with the publishers and a lot on the publisher side to monetize their content.

Perplexity, for one, said it wants to have 30 new partners by the end of the year. That’s immediate growth right there.

There are also different types of AI verticals within legal, fintech, healthcare companies that have to piecemeal, knock on doors and get specific publisher content. It’s a complicated process and an expensive process. At the same time, there are also different content types that would be used by AI companies beyond news media, such as voice, video, and audio.  

Ultimately, it’s adding more partners from both sides.

How does ScalePost make revenue?

We have a rev-share system with publishers, taking a percentage of revenue from publishers making money through our model. To that, we have a software fee model. Since we have a couple of different products, it varies across products, as well. [The firm didn’t share more details on how it makes money.]

How do you see the future of AI and publisher relationships evolving? Will there be more lawsuits or AI companies scraping data?

Publishers are making decisions based on their own risk profiles and corporate strategies. But a market [helping publishers and AI companies work together] is being created as we speak. And like any early market, there are first movers and inherent risks. We strongly believe that this will become the standard model moving forward, where AI companies and others needing content can access it easily.

However, the legal landscape is still uncertain and may stay that way for some time. It’s possible that all three scenarios could coexist: Some publishers might do nothing about AI, others might pursue legal action and some may enter into agreements with AI companies.

We are yet to see which one will ultimately take over.