OpenAI signs first Brazil media deal with Grupo Folha and Grupo UOL

More than 900 million weekly active ChatGPT users can now access summaries grounded in reporting from Folha de S.Paulo and UOL, under a strategic content partnership announced by OpenAI, Grupo Folha and Grupo UOL. The deal, effective immediately, marks OpenAI's first media partnership in Brazil.

The agreement fits a broader OpenAI effort to work collaboratively with news organizations around the world. The company has already signed publisher partnerships across the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, and Brazil now joins that list. OpenAI's stated goal is to integrate trusted reporting into AI-powered experiences and to bring journalism into ChatGPT in ways that emphasize attribution, transparency and links back to original sources.

Why it matters

The partnership lands in one of ChatGPT's largest markets. Brazil counts more than 50 million monthly active ChatGPT users, and roughly 140 million messages are exchanged per day in the country, according to the announcement. For OpenAI, adding two of Brazil's most consequential newsrooms to its licensing portfolio strengthens the factual grounding of its answers in a market where it already has massive reach.

For the publishers, the calculus is equally concrete. Grupo Folha and Grupo UOL gain access to new global audiences through ChatGPT, and — in a component of the deal that goes beyond content display — they will also receive access to Codex, ChatGPT Enterprise and OpenAI's API. The two groups said they plan to use those tools to explore how AI can support their journalism, develop new products and features for readers, and enhance internal workflows and business operations.

The stakes extend past a single commercial arrangement. News publishers worldwide are negotiating how their work is used by AI companies, and licensing deals have become one of the central mechanisms for resolving that tension — trading compensation and attribution for access to training and retrieval. This agreement puts Brazil's two major digital and print publishers firmly on the licensing side of that divide rather than in litigation.

What the executives said

Sérgio Dávila, Editor-in-Chief of Folha de S.Paulo, framed the deal as validation of professional journalism's value. "The interest of an artificial intelligence giant like OpenAI in displaying content produced by Folha de S.Paulo and UOL only reinforces the importance of professional journalism," Dávila said.

On the OpenAI side, Varun Shetty, VP of Media Partnerships, positioned the arrangement as both a product improvement and an ecosystem play. "Folha de S.Paulo and UOL are among Brazil's most relevant sources of original reporting. By making their journalism accessible in ChatGPT, we want to bring more useful, timely, and locally relevant answers to ChatGPT, while supporting the broader news ecosystem," Shetty said.

Carlos Ponce de Leon, Folha de S.Paulo's Co-CEO, took a more expansive view of the industry moment. "AI will define the next era of the news industry and Folha wants to help shape that future. By partnering with OpenAI, we are putting Folha at the forefront of this transformation and creating new ways to expand the reach, relevance, and impact of trusted journalism," he said.

UOL's leadership emphasized the distribution logic of the deal. "AI platforms benefit from reliable sources for news. It is only natural that they partner with the creators of high-quality content for that," said Paulo Samia, CEO of UOL. Murilo Garavello, UOL's Content Director, put it in terms of audience behavior: "We want our journalism in every environment Brazilians use—and that truthful information can be disseminated as widely as possible."

What changes for users

Starting today, ChatGPT users worldwide will see summaries based on Folha de S.Paulo and UOL reporting, alongside what OpenAI describes as high-quality journalism access, with attribution and links pointing back to the original sources. The announcement does not specify a separate product surface for the Brazilian content; it will flow through the existing ChatGPT experience.

The structure mirrors OpenAI's other publisher deals, which pair content licensing with enterprise tooling. The addition of Codex, ChatGPT Enterprise and API access gives Grupo Folha and Grupo UOL the means to embed OpenAI's models into their own editorial and business operations — from internal workflows to reader-facing products.

The competitive and policy backdrop

OpenAI's publisher partnership program now spans five named markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Brazil. Each deal follows the same strategic logic — securing trusted, attributable content for an AI product whose usefulness depends on reliable information, while giving publishers reach among users who may never visit a news site directly.

Brazil is a particularly valuable market in that equation. With more than 50 million monthly active users and around 140 million messages exchanged per day, the country generates conversation volume that makes locally relevant, Portuguese-language source material a meaningful quality lever for ChatGPT's answers.

For the news industry, the deal is a data point in an ongoing argument about whether licensing agreements with AI companies strengthen or hollow out publishers. Folha and UOL's leadership have clearly chosen the former interpretation: both companies framed the partnership as a way to expand the reach of trusted journalism rather than a concession to platform power.

What comes next

The immediate deliverables are visible now — attributed summaries and links across ChatGPT's user base of more than 900 million weekly actives. The longer-term work happens inside the two publishing groups, which will use Codex, ChatGPT Enterprise and API access to build AI-supported journalism products and overhaul internal workflows. How those experiments translate into reader-facing features, and whether OpenAI extends its partnership model to other Brazilian publishers, will shape the next phase of AI-news relations in one of ChatGPT's most important markets.