In Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, Delfi Meedia has built one of the strongest foundations for AI in journalism. With one of the highest digital subscription rates in the world, Delfi has moved beyond the buzz around AI to put it into everyday practice, supporting both its journalism and business. Under Chief AI Officer Ivar Krustok, the company has treated AI as infrastructure, spending years on data foundations before rolling out tools that accelerate reporting, connect teams across borders, and give managers real-time answers.
When I spoke with Ivar for this week’s episode of Newsroom Robots, what struck me was the pragmatism of Delfi’s approach. Rather than chasing hype, they zeroed in on the fundamental questions every newsroom faces: How do you help reporters cover more stories? How do you serve readers across multiple languages? How do you ensure staff trust the tools being rolled out?
The results are impressive. Delfi now runs a live translation feed that lets reporters in Estonia instantly read stories from colleagues in Latvia and Lithuania. A searchable archive spanning 25 years of reporting helps editors pull quotes or trace narratives in seconds. Journalists no longer sift through endless court filings as bots scan new cases and deliver quick summaries to editors, already helping find stories that might otherwise have been missed. Even the advertising team benefits, with bots that answer inventory questions in industry-specific language.
Delfi’s AI strategy is organized into three components. The first is everyday newsroom tools such as transcription, translation, and summarization. The second is long-term experimental projects, such as their in-house ChatGPT-style toolkit trained on archives and government data. The third is company-wide literacy, ensuring that everyone, from reporters to managers, can confidently use AI. This blend of immediate utility, forward-looking experiments, and staff training has laid the foundations for Delfi to be an AI-ready newsroom.
Here are three takeaways from my conversation with Ivar Krustok:
1️⃣ Build the foundations for your data infrastructure before AI
Delfi spent years cleaning subscriber records, standardizing article tags, and unifying advertising and editorial data. That foundation is why their AI tools actually work. Skip this step, and you’re building on quicksand.
2️⃣ Build what is core, buy what is not
Delfi develops its own systems for sensitive or proprietary work and relies on vendors for routine tasks like summarization or polls. This approach keeps costs down while safeguarding what makes them unique. If something drives your competitive edge, keep it in-house.
3️⃣ Move fast with prototypes
With tools like Manus AI, Google Stitch, and v0.dev, Ivar can spin up working prototypes in under three hours. Instead of debating specs in meetings, editorial and product teams test real tools immediately, provide feedback, and shape what gets built. This speed has created both momentum and trust across the newsroom.
Delfi’s experience shows that the hard work of AI lies not in the models but in the management. Clean data, clear ownership of core systems, and rapid prototyping are what turn AI into real results. Before adding another tool to your stack, ask whether your data is ready, your newsroom knows how to use it, and your team can test it quickly. That is the difference between experimenting with AI and building with it.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Ivar Krustok on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or other major podcast platforms.
