The Atlantic fixed its business. Then AI came for media.

Courtesy of The Atlantic; BI Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic magazine, put together a deal with OpenAI in 2024.

That deal has had lots of upside for his property, he says — but delivering readers to his site is not one of them.

In addition to running The Atlantic's business, Thompson also creates revenue-generating content separate from the editors and writers who work there.

It's an unusual arrangement.

Running a great magazine is hard.

So is turning a money-losing magazine into a profit center.

Nicholas Thompson has done both.

The CEO of The Atlantic took the job in 2021, when it was gushing red ink and slashing its workforce.

Today it's profitable, boasts 1.6 million subscribers, and revenue that Thompson says is "much bigger" than $100 million — the number it last reported in 2023.

Thompson has the advantage of a very deep-pocketed owner — Laurene Powell Jobs, who is worth a reported $15 billion — and a very talented editor.

Under editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg's watch, the Atlantic has become a consistent source of must-read pieces .

But Thompson is also an atypical CEO: Prior to joining The Atlantic, he had a long career as an editor at outlets like Wired and The New Yorker.

On top of that, he's a prolific creator who churns out books , podcasts , and, most recently, vertical videos for a very large audience.

I talked to Thompson about what it's like to work for one of the richest people in the world, what AI has done for his magazine and why it has yet to produce a breakthrough product that normal people use, and why he's a business-side executive making content that looks a lot like the stuff the editorial staff at his publication might make for themselves.