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 on Thursday in the context of Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary.
The partnerships are part of Wikimedia Enterprise, an initiative launched in 2021 that gives large companies paid access to a premium version of Wikipedia’s API. Lane Becker, senior director of earned revenue at the Wikimedia Foundation, explains The edge that the program offers a version of Wikipedia that is ‘tailored’ for commercial use and AI companies. “We take feature requests, we build features and functionality, and we try to structure the data to support what the needs of these companies are,” says Becker.
The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Perplexity and Mistral AI joined the Enterprise program “in the past year.” Although the company lists Meta and Amazon as “existing” partners, this is the first time they have been publicly announced. The money raised as part of Wikimedia Enterprise go to supporting the nonprofit’s projectswhich Becker says can help create a more sustainable business.
“It is in the best interest of every AI company to support Wikipedia’s long-term sustainability, because Wikipedia and all the other projects we support are so essential to their operations,” says Becker. “Achieving a new sustainable balance with these new companies is critical to our survival, but also to their survival.”
#Microsoft #Meta #Amazon #pay #enterprise #access #Wikipedia