ProRataAI, a company committed to building AI solutions that honor and reward the work of content creators, has announced the close of a $40 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Touring Capital, with participation from a growing network of investors who share ProRata’s vision for a more equitable and transparent AI ecosystem. This latest investment brings the company’s total funding to over $75 million since its founding just last year, and it marks a significant step forward in its mission to reshape how publishers engage with generative AI.
The company also announced the launch of Gist Answers, ProRata’s new AI-as-a-service platform designed to give publishers direct control over how AI interacts with their content. Gist Answers allows media organizations to embed custom AI search, summarization, and recommendation tools directly into their websites and digital properties. Rather than watching their content be scraped and repurposed without consent, publishers can now offer AI-powered experiences on their own terms—driving deeper engagement, longer user sessions, and more meaningful interactions with their audiences.
The platform has already attracted early-access partners representing over 100 publications, a testament to the growing demand for AI tools that respect editorial integrity and support sustainable business models. Gist Answers is designed to be flexible and intuitive, allowing publishers to tailor the AI experience to their brand’s voice and editorial standards. It’s not just about delivering answers—it’s about creating a richer, more interactive layer of discovery that keeps users engaged and informed.
Beyond direct integration, ProRata is also offering publishers the opportunity to license their content to inform Gist Answers across third-party destinations. More than 700 high-quality publications around the world have already joined this initiative, contributing to a growing network of licensed content that powers AI responses with verified, attributable information. This model is underpinned by ProRata’s proprietary content attribution technology, which ensures that every piece of content used by the AI is properly credited and compensated. In doing so, the company is building a framework where human creativity is not only preserved but actively rewarded in the AI economy.
Gist Answers is designed to work seamlessly with Gist Ads, ProRata’s innovative advertising platform that transforms AI-generated responses into premium ad inventory. By placing native, conversational ads adjacent to AI answers, Gist Ads creates a format that aligns with user intent and delivers strong performance for marketers. For publishers, this means new revenue streams that are directly tied to the value of their content and the engagement it drives.
ProRata’s approach stands in stark contrast to the extractive models that have dominated the early days of generative AI. The company was founded on the belief that the work of journalists, creators, and publishers is not just data to be mined—it’s a vital source of knowledge and insight that deserves recognition, protection, and compensation. By building systems that prioritize licensing over scraping, transparency over opacity, and partnership over exploitation, ProRata is proving that AI can be both powerful and principled.
How the funding will be used: With the Series B funding, ProRata plans to scale its team, expand its product offerings, and deepen its relationships with publishers and content creators around the world. The company is focused on building tools that are not only technologically advanced but also aligned with the values of the people who produce the content that fuels AI. As generative AI continues to evolve, ProRata is positioning itself as a trusted partner for publishers seeking to navigate this new landscape with confidence and integrity.
KEY QUOTES:
“Search has always shaped how people discover knowledge, but for too long publishers have been forced to give that power away. Gist Answers changes that dynamic, bringing AI search directly to their sites, where it deepens engagement, restores control, and opens entirely new paths for discovery.”
Bill Gross, CEO and founder of ProRata
“Generative AI is reshaping search and digital advertising, creating an opportunity for a new category of infrastructure to compensate content creators whose work powers the answers we are relying on daily. ProRata is addressing this inflection point with a market-neutral model designed to become the default platform for attribution and fair monetization across the ecosystem. We believe the shift toward AI-native search experiences will unlock greater value for advertisers, publishers, and consumers alike.”
Nagraj Kashyap, General Partner, Touring Capital
“As a publisher, our priority is making sure our journalism reaches audiences in trusted ways. By contributing our content to the Gist network, we know it’s being used ethically, with full credit, while also helping adopters of Gist Answers deliver accurate, high-quality responses to their readers.”
Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic
“The role of publishers in the AI era is to ensure that trusted journalism remains central to how people search and learn. By partnering with ProRata, we’re showing how an established brand can embrace new technology like Gist Answers to deepen engagement and demonstrate the enduring value of quality journalism.”
Andrew Perlman, CEO of Recurrent, owner of Popular Science
“Search has always been critical to how our readers find and interact with content. With Gist Answers, our audience can engage directly with us and get trusted answers sourced from our reporting, strengthened by content from a vetted network of international media outlets. Engagement is higher, and we’re able to explore new revenue opportunities that simply didn’t exist before.”
Jeremy Gulban, CEO of CherryRoad Media
“We’re really excited to be partnering with ProRata. At Arena, we’re always looking for unique and innovative ways to better serve our audience, and Gist Answers allows us to adapt to new technology in an ethical way.”
Paul Edmondson, CEO of The Arena Group, owner of Parade and Athlon Sports
