Wikipedia strikes AI partnerships with Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to sustain operations

Wikipedia will share content with AI firms in new licensing deals

On Thursday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced licensing deals with Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI, expanding its effort to charge major tech companies for using Wikipedia content to train the AI models that power AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT. While these same companies previously scraped Wikipedia without permission, the deals mean that most major AI developers have now signed on to the foundation's Wikimedia Enterprise program, a commercial subsidiary that sells API access to Wikipedia's 65 million articles at higher speeds and volumes than the free public APIs provide. The foundation did not disclose the financial terms of the deals. The new partners join Google, which signed a deal with Wikimedia Enterprise in 2022, as well as smaller companies like Ecosia, Nomic, Pleias, ProRata, and Reef Media. The revenue helps offset infrastructure costs for the nonprofit, which otherwise relies on small public donations while watching its content become a staple of training data for AI models. "Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies' work that they need to figure out how to support financially," Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, told Reuters. "It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we're going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform... but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia's work." The cost of "free" knowledge The push for paid licensing follows years of rising infrastructure costs as AI companies scraped Wikipedia content at an industrial scale. In April 2025, the foundation reported that bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content had grown 50 percent since January 2024, with bots accounting for 65 percent of the most expensive requests to core infrastructure despite making up just 35 percent of total pageviews. By October, the Wikimedia Foundation disclosed that human traffic to Wikipedia had fallen approximately 8 percent year over year after the organization updated its bot-detection systems and discovered that much of what appeared to be human visitors were actually automated scrapers built to evade detection. The traffic decline threatens the feedback loop that has sustained Wikipedia for a quarter century: Readers visit, some become editors or donors, and the content ostensibly improves. But today, many AI chatbots and search engine summaries answer questions using Wikipedia content without sending users to the site itself. Meanwhile, the foundation's own experiments with generative AI have met resistance from the volunteer editors who maintain the site. In June, Wikipedia paused a pilot program for AI-generated article summaries after editors called it a "ghastly idea" and warned it could undermine trust in the platform. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told The Associated Press that he welcomes AI models training on Wikipedia data. "I'm very happy personally that AI models are training on Wikipedia data because it's human curated," Wales said. "I wouldn't really want to use an AI that's trained only on X, you know, like a very angry AI." But he drew a line at free access: "You should probably chip in and pay for your fair share of the cost that you're putting on us."

Wikimedia Foundation announces new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and others | TechCrunch

As part of its 25th birthday celebration, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a series of new partnerships with AI tech companies that are now customers of its commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. Developed by the foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise allows large-scale reuse and distribution of Wikipedia content, as well as content from other Wikimedia projects. In addition to the previously announced partnership with Google in 2022, the organization shared publicly for the first time that it has formed other partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity over the past year. Other partnerships, like Ecosia, Pleias, and ProRata, have been mentioned before, but are also included in this announcement, along with Nomic and Reef Media. These deals give Wikipedia another way to sustain itself in an age where much of its content is being picked up and reused by AI models and other technology products and services to provide quick, factual answers to consumers' queries. As an enterprise product, Wikimedia Enterprise isn't just about getting tech companies to pay for their use; it also provides them access to Wikimedia projects at a volume and speed designed to meet their data needs. The foundation also noted in a blog post that Wikipedia today is among the top-ten most-visited websites globally, where audiences view more than 65 million articles in over 300 languages, nearly 15 billion times per month. "Wikipedia shows that knowledge is human, and knowledge needs humans. Especially now, in the age of AI, we need the human-powered knowledge of Wikipedia more than ever," noted Wikimedia Foundation's CPO/CTO, Selena Deckelmann, in a statement. "With continued help from readers, volunteer editors, donors, partners, and fans across the globe, Wikipedia will remain the crucial hub for human-powered knowledge and collaboration online for the next 25 years and beyond." In addition to the tech deals announcement, the foundation launched a birthday campaign, which includes a new video docuseries offering a behind-the-scenes look at Wikipedia volunteers around the world. It also launched a "25 Years of Wikipedia" time capsule to explore the site's past, present, and future, with some narration provided by founder Jimmy Wales. The organization will celebrate a livestreamed birthday event as well, on January 15, at 4:00 PM UTC, with guests, games, and entertainment. The event can be found on Wikipedia's YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram channels. The organization's birthday announcements additionally highlighted other recent advances, like upgrades to its tech infrastructure, its own approach to AI, new experiments like games and short-form video, and more.

Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are paying up for 'enterprise' access to Wikipedia

Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI have joined Google in paying the Wikimedia Foundation for access to its projects, including Wikipedia's vast collection of articles. The Wikimedia Foundation announced the news as part of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary on Thursday. The partnerships are part of Wikimedia Enterprise, an initiative launched in 2021 that gives large companies access to a premium version of Wikipedia's API for a fee. Lane Becker, the Wikimedia Foundation's senior director of earned revenue, tells The Verge that the program offers a version of Wikipedia "tuned" for commercial use and AI companies. "We take feature requests, we build features and functionality, and sort of try to structure the data in ways that support what these companies' needs are," Becker says. The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Perplexity, and Mistral AI joined the Enterprise program "over the past year." Though the company lists Meta and Amazon as "existing" partners, this is the first time they've been announced publicly. The funds collected as part of Wikimedia Enterprise go toward supporting the nonprofit's projects, which Becker says can help it establish a more sustainable business. "It is in every AI company's best interest to support the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia and all the other projects that we support are so core to their business," Becker says. "Getting to a new sustainable equilibrium with these new companies is critical for our continued existence, but for their continued existence as well."

Wikipedia owner signs on Microsoft, Meta in AI content training deals

Jan 15 (Reuters) - Wikipedia on Thursday unveiled partnerships with several Big Tech companies including Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, Meta (META.O), opens new tab and Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, marking a major step up in the non-profit's ability to monetize tech firms' reliance on its content. Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of the online encyclopedia, said it also signed on AI startup Perplexity and France's Mistral AI, among other firms, over the past year, having enlisted Meta and Amazon as partners previously. It already has an arrangement with Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, which was announced in 2022. Wikipedia content is crucial to training AI models -- its 65 million articles across over 300 languages are a key part of training data for generative AI chatbots and assistants developed by tech majors. However, companies scraping high volumes of freely available Wikipedia knowledge for AI training has driven up server demand and, subsequently, costs at the non-profit, whose primary source of income is small donations from the public. Wikimedia has been pushing for greater adoption of its enterprise product, which allows tech companies to pay for training access to its content while receiving data in ways that cater to their large-scale training needs. "Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies' work that they need to figure out how to support financially," Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, told Reuters in an interview. "It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we're going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform ... but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia's work." Wikipedia's content is created and maintained by about 250,000 volunteer editors globally, who write, edit and fact-check the information. "Access to high‑quality, trustworthy information is at the heart of how we think about the future of AI at Microsoft ... (With Wikimedia), we're helping create a sustainable content ecosystem for the AI internet, where contributors are valued," said Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Tim Frank. Wikimedia named former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Bernadette Meehan its new chief executive, effective on January 20, Reuters first reported last month. Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Wikimedia announces AI partners including Meta and Microsoft

As part of Wikipedia's , parent company Wikimedia a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access. As noted by , the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise partners "over the past year," while listing Amazon, Google and Meta as "existing" partners. It appears today is the first time they have been officially announced. The organization on this issue last year, saying the reduction in traffic due to LLMs and AI summaries could prove existential for the nonprofit and the world's largest online encyclopedia. Wikipedia's 65 million free articles have served as rich training data for AI chatbots, but all that scraping has driven up server costs at the organization. Wikimedia had been hoping to move these large firms over to its enterprise platform to help with costs. "It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we're going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform ... but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia's work," Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise told . Under the deal, these companies will have access to high-throughput APIs that can supply chatbot systems with content from Wikipedia as well as Wikimedia's other projects, including Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiquote and more.

Wikipedia owner signs on Microsoft, Meta in AI content training deals

Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of the online encyclopedia, said it also signed on AI startup Perplexity and France's Mistral AI, among other firms, over the past year, having enlisted Meta and Amazon as partners previously. Wikipedia on Thursday unveiled partnerships with several Big Tech companies including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, marking a major step up in the non-profit's ability to monetize tech firms' ⁠reliance on its content. Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of the online encyclopedia, said it also signed on AI startup Perplexity and France's Mistral AI, among other firms, over the past year, having enlisted Meta and Amazon as partners previously. It already has an arrangement with Alphabet's Google, which was announced in 2022. Wikipedia content is crucial to training AI models - its 65 million articles across over 300 languages are a key part of training data for generative AI chatbots and assistants developed by tech majors. However, companies scraping high volumes of freely available Wikipedia knowledge for AI training has driven up server demand and, subsequently, costs at the non-profit, whose primary source of income is small donations from the public. Wikimedia has been pushing for greater adoption of its enterprise product, which allows tech companies to pay for training access to its content while receiving data in ways that cater to their large-scale training needs. "Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies' work that they need to figure out how to support financially," Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, told Reuters in an interview. "It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we're going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform ... but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit ⁠to sustaining Wikipedia's work." Wikipedia's ⁠content is created and maintained by about 250,000 volunteer editors globally, who write, edit and fact-check the information. "Access to high‑quality, trustworthy information is at the heart of how we think about the future of AI at Microsoft ... (With Wikimedia), we're helping create a sustainable content ecosystem for the AI internet, where contributors are valued," said Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Tim Frank. Wikimedia named former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Bernadette Meehan its new chief executive, effective on January 20, Reuters first reported last month.

Wikipedia owner signs on Microsoft, Meta in AI content training deals

Jan 15 (Reuters) - Wikipedia on Thursday unveiled partnerships with several Big Tech companies including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, marking a major step up in the non-profit's ability to monetize tech firms' reliance on its content. Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of the online encyclopedia, said it also signed on AI startup Perplexity and France's Mistral AI, among other firms, over the past year, having enlisted Meta and Amazon as partners previously. It already has an arrangement with Alphabet's Google, which was announced in 2022. Wikipedia content is crucial to training AI models -- its 65 million articles across over 300 languages are a key part of training data for generative AI chatbots and assistants developed by tech majors. However, companies scraping high volumes of freely available Wikipedia knowledge for AI training has driven up server demand and, subsequently, costs at the non-profit, whose primary source of income is small donations from the public. Wikimedia has been pushing for greater adoption of its enterprise product, which allows tech companies to pay for training access to its content while receiving data in ways that cater to their large-scale training needs. "Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies' work that they need to figure out how to support financially," Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, told Reuters in an interview. "It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we're going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform ... but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia's work." Wikipedia's content is created and maintained by about 250,000 volunteer editors globally, who write, edit and fact-check the information. "Access to high-quality, trustworthy information is at the heart of how we think about the future of AI at Microsoft ... (With Wikimedia), we're helping create a sustainable content ecosystem for the AI internet, where contributors are valued," said Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Tim Frank. Wikimedia named former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Bernadette Meehan its new chief executive, effective on January 20, Reuters first reported last month. (Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)