Axel Springer’s plans for artificial intelligence linked two changes: investing in AI businesses and using automation inside its media operations. An internal mail published in June 2023 made the employment implications more explicit, describing possible layoffs as the company pursued a “digital only” direction.
Building an AI investment team
CEO Mathias Döpfner said in an internal podcast that Axel Springer would create a team focused on AI investments and acquisitions. Reuters obtained the podcast. The report gave no precise strategy for the team, but said it could pursue companies at both early and late stages if they were “important or attractive” to Springer.
The plan appeared to position the group largely as an investor in AI companies. Döpfner pointed to the acquisition of career platform Stepstone as a model, saying it was set to go public this year. The source describes the AI effort as a search for opportunities across businesses that might benefit from the technology.
Döpfner was especially interested in AI that could unsettle Axel Springer’s existing business areas: advertising, e-commerce, and journalism. He framed the possibility of disruption as something the company should study and pursue itself: “If somebody wants to kill journalism, OK, let us understand how and why, and let us journalists do it ourselves,” he said.
Automation moves into newsroom work
Axel Springer had already begun experimenting with AI in the newsroom. One example was software that automatically suggests search-engine-optimized headlines for authors to consider.
The company’s broader argument was that automation could change how journalism is produced without removing the need for journalism itself. In a future strategy for Bild and Welt published at the end of February 2023, Döpfner said artificial intelligence and increasing automation would make journalism “even more crucial than before.”
He described journalistic creation as becoming the core work, while production would increasingly be technically supported and automated. That shift, he said, meant reorganizing newsrooms and moving staff and costs. The strategy emphasized the importance of original content to a publisher’s future.
The workforce consequences become clearer
An update dated June 19, 2023, added excerpts from an internal mail to Axel Springer employees. Anton Rainer of Der Spiegel published the excerpts on Twitter. The mail described an “AI offensive” intended to support the company’s goal of publishing “digital only.”
It said AI offered “enormous opportunities to give journalists more time for research and creativity.” At the same time, it referred to laying off colleagues who were “replaced by AI and/or processes in the digital world” or who “do not find themselves in the new lineup with their current skills.”
The mail gave the “classic paper CVD” as an example of a role that AI could make obsolete. It said AI would “very soon … be able to completely take over the layout of the printed newspaper.” The excerpt thus connected automation to specific newsroom and print production roles, while leaving the broader scale of the planned changes unspecified.
A digital strategy with unresolved trade-offs
Axel Springer planned to focus more strongly on digital business, in line with its “digital only” strategy. Job cuts at Bild and Welt were also planned, but their extent remained open in the source. The stated shift toward automated production therefore sat alongside uncertainty about how many jobs would be affected.
The company operated Bild and Welt, described in the source as two leading media brands in German-speaking countries, and sought growth in the U.S. media market, including through its acquisition of Politicio. Its AI plans touched both the economics of that expansion and the work behind its publications.
The tension is clear in the company’s own framing: automation might give journalists more time for creative work, but the same transformation could replace some roles and require newsroom reorganizations. Axel Springer presented strong original journalism as essential to surviving that change, even as it explored technologies that could reshape how journalism is made.