The Wikimedia Foundation has signed new commercial agreements with major artificial intelligence companies including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity and Mistral AI, part of an effort to help offset the rising infrastructure costs tied to AI training on the volunteer-run encyclopedia.
The deals will allow AI platforms to access Wikipedia’s structured content at scale through the foundation’s Wikimedia Enterprise services, which sell licenses tailored to high-volume usage. Wikimedia Enterprise already has agreements with Google and Ecosia.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said he welcomes the partnerships, describing Wikipedia’s human-curated data as a valuable training resource for AI models while emphasizing the need for fair contributions from companies that rely heavily on the free online encyclopedia’s content. Wales told The Associated Press that Wikipedia’s curated information helps maintain quality and reliability in AI outputs, contrasting it with models trained on less reliable sources.
The nonprofit has faced increased traffic and technical strain from automated AI data collection, which has boosted server costs. Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, who is stepping down this week, said the new agreements aim to relieve the financial strain so individual donors are not forced to subsidize large technology firms.
Earlier in October 2025, Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, a new crowdsourced online encyclopedia designed to challenge Wikipedia and reshape how information is created and verified online.
Despite the rise of AI competitors and criticism from some quarters, including rival technology ventures, Wales said he sees AI tools ultimately as potential aids for Wikipedia editors rather than replacements for human-generated content. He highlighted possibilities such as AI assistance with updating links and improving search functionality.
Wikipedia, created in 2001 by Wales and others, has grown into one of the world’s most visited websites, with millions of articles contributed by volunteers worldwide. The licensing push reflects broader debates about how nonprofit and public knowledge sources should be compensated as AI technologies expand.
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