6AM City Acquires AI-Powered Newsletter Startup Good Daily

Newsletter-first local media network 6AM City has acquired AI newsletter startup Good Daily to accelerate its subscriber and market growth. The price was not disclosed.

As part of the deal, Good Daily, founder Matthew Henderson—the sole employee behind the startup—joins 6AM City as vice president of engineering.

With the acquisition, 6AM City expands from around 1.4 million to nearly 2 million subscribers and grows its footprint from around 30 markets to over 400 cities across the U.S. It will also remove coverage of crime and politics from the Good Daily titles, in keeping with the 6AM practice of focusing on lifestyle content and events offerings.

But more consequentially, the deal gives 6AM a new playbook for expansion. Instead of launching new markets by hiring editorial and sales staff up front—a process that could cost up to $250,000 per market—6AM City will now begin seeding new markets using AI-powered newsletters that require minimal human involvement until those markets mature.

“This acquisition creates a feeder system for us, which allows us to chart a path to one day operate in dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of cities,” said Ryan Heafy, chief operating officer and cofounder of 6AM City. “With the technology that [Henderson] built, combined with our editorial policy and content mix, we believe we have a formula for success.”

Beyond the Good Daily acquisition, 6AM is also launching three new core markets—in Northern Virginia, Orlando, and Knoxville—and introducing two new products: a white-label newsletter studio for other businesses and a free Slack community for newsletter professionals.

From seed to core

Historically, 6AM City has entered new cities by hiring at least one editor, often a small team, to curate a daily newsletter focused on lifestyle, civic, and cultural happenings. That approach has been slow and costly. 

Good Daily instead uses AI and scraping technology to gather free, publicly available content from social channels, civic sources, and nonprofits, distributing it via daily newsletters and acquiring subscribers through paid marketing.

The AI-first model enables Good Daily to operate in hundreds of smaller, often rural markets where the economics of traditional local journalism are not viable. 6AM City plans to integrate this model as its new “seed market strategy: launch markets using AI-driven newsletters, then layer in human staff as those markets develop.

To graduate a seed market into what 6AM calls a “core market,” it must meet two of three benchmarks: audience scale, advertiser demand, or advocacy from local institutions like chambers of commerce. 

“You start with AI, get to 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers, generate a few thousand dollars in revenue, then bring in full-time staff and grow it into a core product,” Heafy said.

An AI expansion model for local media

The strategy will test whether media companies can successfully outsource a broad swath of their editorial generation to AI.

The seed-to-core model allows for broader geographic coverage with lower upfront investment, especially when compared to competitors like Axios Local, which has expanded to 34 markets and 2 million subscribers but with a higher cost basis.

The approach crystallizes some of the most pressing questions surrounding the use of AI, such as whether it can produce a compelling product with little human oversight. And, more pointedly, if 6AM can turn a profit in these markets without a staff, will it still commit to hiring?

“The 6AM pitch was always two people in every market,” said one media analyst familiar with their model. “This is either a hack to get there eventually, or a signal that they think AI can do the job.”

The goal of the model is to produce core markets staffed by humans, according to Heafy.

The path to profitability

The acquisition comes as 6AM City reports solid financial growth. 

The company is generating more than $1 million in monthly revenue and expects to reach profitability by the end of the year, according to Heafy. It has around 100 employees.

It has raised roughly $21 million in capital to date, including a Series A round led by TV broadcaster Tegna last February that brought in around $10 million. 

The company generates the vast majority of its revenue from local and national advertising.

It plans to monetize its seed markets in three ways: a self-serve ad platform that allows small brands to advertise limited campaigns; a proprietary affiliate program, called The Buy, which promotes products; and national buys, which are sold on a CPM rate and thus grow more lucrative as total impressions grow. 

“Anything related to advertising is handled by humans,” Heafy said. “This is about process efficiency on the content creation side—allowing our editorial and revenue teams to focus on high-impact community-driven work.”