Source: Search Engine Journal
Brave has monetized its search index by licensing it to Cohere, Mistral, and Perplexity—circumventing the publisher consent and licensing negotiations that traditional search engines conduct. The company built traffic and index value partly through its browser distribution and privacy positioning, then converted that asset into AI training revenue without sharing proceeds with content creators. This upends the query-for-content exchange that has underpinned search economics. The move signals that alternative search platforms see data licensing as a faster revenue path than ad-supported search, but it will likely accelerate pressure on websites to use robots.txt and legal measures to block indexing by unlicensed parties.