40M$ to get a marginally better model is surprising, why not just use the free weight models

They're trying to find a moat in the AI era, for their relatively gigantic news business (and they're among the few still standing giants in news). Most of these organizations are very scared of what AI might do to them.

I'm pretty sure, given the reference to fiduciary grade standards that they are doing more to secure their moat in Legal, Accounting and related fields.

Reuters News is only slightly over 11% of their business. Legal and Accounting is closer to half.

on edit: just went and looked it up, adding in compliance offerings it is over 80% of their business.

they should unite to block all news from getting to LLMs without LLM providers paying per access