{"id":301379,"date":"2025-11-22T11:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/301379\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T11:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:53:09","slug":"science-centric-streaming-service-curiosity-stream-is-an-ai-licensing-firm-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/301379\/","title":{"rendered":"Science-centric streaming service Curiosity Stream is an AI-licensing firm now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all know streaming services\u2019 usual tricks for making more money: get more subscribers, charge those subscribers more money, and sell ads. But science streaming service Curiosity Stream is taking a new route that could reshape how streaming companies, especially <a href=\"2.%09https:\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/08\/these-are-the-best-streaming-services-you-arent-watching\/\">niche options<\/a>, try to survive.<\/p>\n<p>Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks launched Curiosity Stream in 2015. The streaming service costs $40 per year, and it doesn\u2019t have commercials.<\/p>\n<p>The streaming business has grown to also include the Curiosity Channel TV channel. CuriosityStream Inc. also makes money through original programming and its Curiosity University educational programming. The firm turned its first positive net income in its fiscal Q1 2025, after about a decade of business.<\/p>\n<p>With its focus on science, history, research, and education, Curiosity Stream will always be a smaller player compared to other streaming services. As of March 2023, Curiosity Stream had 23 million subscribers, a paltry user base compared to Netflix\u2019s 301.6 million (as of January 2025).<\/p>\n<p>Still, in an extremely competitive market, Curiosity Stream\u2019s revenue increased 41 percent year over year in its Q3 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/investors.curiositystream.com\/single-news-releases\/?storyId=7942423718041463\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">earnings<\/a> announced this month. This was largely due to the licensing of Curiosity Stream\u2019s original programming to train large language models (LLMs).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLooking at our year-to-date numbers, licensing generated $23.4 million through September, which \u2026 is already over half of what our subscription business generated for all of 2024,\u201d Phillip Hayden, Curiosity Stream\u2019s CFO, said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/earnings\/call-transcripts\/2025\/11\/13\/curiositystream-curi-q3-2025-earnings-transcript\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">during a call<\/a> with investors this month.<\/p>\n<p>Thus far, Curiosity Stream has completed 18 AI-related fulfillments \u201cacross video, audio, and code assets\u201d with nine partners, an October announcement said.<\/p>\n<p>The company expects to make more revenue from IP licensing deals with AI companies than it does from subscriptions by 2027, \u201cpossibly earlier,\u201d CEO Clint Stinchcomb said during the earnings call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We all know streaming services\u2019 usual tricks for making more money: get more subscribers, charge those subscribers more&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-301379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}