CuriosityStream’s Revenue Growth Recovers From First-Quarter Stall
CuriosityStream reported $14.1 million in licensing revenue and raised its full-year outlook after delivering record quarterly earnings.
CuriosityStream Inc. (CURI), the factual entertainment company, returned to double-digit revenue growth in the quarter ended June 30 after a near-flat first quarter interrupted its expansion. Revenue rose 22% year over year, following little growth in the first three months of 2026 and 36% growth in the final quarter of 2025. The company’s run of positive adjusted free cash flow ended in the second quarter.
Licensing accounted for about three-fifths of the quarter’s $23.2 million in revenue. The business generated $14.1 million, with Chief Executive Clint Stinchcomb attributing its performance to new partnerships across traditional media and AI training. The mix gave substance to the company’s earlier expectation that licensing would become its larger growth engine and surpass subscriptions for the full year. Its licensing activities spanned conventional programming distribution, audio and video datasets, and private code for AI training.
The quarter’s deliveries illustrated the breadth of that business. CuriosityStream licensed thousands of hours of premium programming to more than 25 broadcasters, streamers, and other distributors. It also supplied synchronized, multi-camera action sequences to a video research laboratory for training models on editing workflows. Separately, it licensed code for AI training, reinforcement learning, and evaluation. The company’s available private code corpus contained more than 880 billion tokens.
Subscriptions remained the other principal revenue pillar. Stinchcomb described subscription revenue as sturdy, while the company reported new launches in Mexico and the United States through Apple, Sling, Dish, and other partners. CuriosityStream premiered more than 160 films and series for subscription video and pay-TV audiences. It also continued changes to payments, billing, and processing, and said May had been its best month for retaining customers otherwise lost through involuntary churn.
Profitability recovered alongside revenue. Gross margin reached 72.8%, against 56.1% in the first quarter, and gross profit totaled $16.9 million. Stinchcomb attributed the record earnings to licensing execution, subscription revenue, and continued cost discipline.
Net income reached a record $8.9 million, or $0.15 a share. Adjusted EBITDA was also a record, at $11.4 million, extending the company’s positive streak on that measure to six quarters. The adjusted measure excluded stock-based compensation and other items; it did not represent cash generated by the business. CuriosityStream’s reconciliation separately identified the adjustments between net income and adjusted EBITDA.
Cash performance moved in the opposite direction. Adjusted free cash flow was negative $4.1 million, ending the nine-quarter positive run reported with the first-quarter results. Operating activities used $4.2 million during the second quarter.
CuriosityStream ended June with $10.9 million in cash, restricted cash, and held-to-maturity securities, and no debt. During the quarter, it paid $5.0 million in ordinary dividends and repurchased nearly $0.6 million of common shares. The board also declared a third-quarter dividend of $0.085 a share, continuing the rate announced with the previous quarter’s results.
The company now expects full-year revenue of $77 million to $82 million, against its previous guidance of $75 million to $80 million. Stinchcomb cited the licensing pipeline in announcing the higher outlook and said the company continued to expect a significant annual increase in revenue and cash flow.
Full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance is $18 million to $22 million. For the second half alone, the company expects $6 million to $10 million. Even the upper end of that six-month forecast is below the $11.4 million earned in the second quarter alone.
Stronger demand supports expansion as pricing diverges