As Wikipedia celebrates its 25th anniversary, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a series of groundbreaking partnerships with major AI companies designed to address one of the nonprofit’s most pressing challenges: the massive costs associated with AI systems scraping its content at unprecedented scale.
New Enterprise Partnerships Address Sustainability Crisis
The Wikimedia Foundation revealed partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity for the first time, joining existing partners including Google (since 2022), Ecosia, Pleias, ProRata, Nomic, and Reef Media. These companies are now customers of Wikimedia Enterprise, a commercial platform that provides high-throughput API access to Wikipedia’s extensive knowledge base.
The move represents a strategic shift for the nonprofit organization, which has faced an existential threat from the explosion of AI chatbots and large language models that freely harvest Wikipedia’s 65 million articles. According to Wikimedia Foundation leadership, AI companies accessing Wikipedia content through official channels helps ensure that volunteer editors’ work is properly credited and that the organization can sustain its operations.
How Wikimedia Enterprise Works
Wikimedia Enterprise provides streamlined access to content at a volume and speed designed specifically for large-scale reusers and distributors like AI chatbots, replacing the less efficient free platform. This arrangement allows AI companies to access not only Wikipedia but also complementary Wikimedia projects including Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, and Wikiquote.
“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,” said Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, in a statement to Reuters. “But all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia’s work.”
The Scale of Wikipedia’s Impact
The announcement highlights Wikipedia’s continued dominance as one of the world’s ten most-visited websites, receiving nearly 15 billion page views monthly across more than 300 languages. With approximately 250,000 active volunteer editors making around 324 changes per minute, Wikipedia remains the largest collaborative knowledge project ever created by humans.
A Sustainable Model for Human-Powered Knowledge
Wikimedia Foundation CTO Selena Deckelmann emphasized that Wikipedia demonstrates knowledge is fundamentally human, noting that human-powered knowledge is particularly valuable in the age of AI. The enterprise partnerships represent a pragmatic solution to ensure Wikipedia can continue operating while AI technology integrates verified, community-curated information into commercial products.
For Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and the organization’s supporters, the partnerships represent the best possible outcome—ensuring that AI systems train on trustworthy human-curated content rather than less reliable sources. The deals provide Wikipedia with sustainable revenue while maintaining the principles of open knowledge that have defined the project for a quarter century.