tech
January 15, 2026
Wikipedia will share content with AI firms in new licensing deals
Wikimedia Enterprise signs Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI to paid deals.
TL;DR
- Wikimedia Foundation is charging major tech companies for using Wikipedia content to train AI models.
- Companies like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI have signed licensing deals.
- These deals are part of the Wikimedia Enterprise program, offering commercial API access to Wikipedia content.
- The revenue helps the nonprofit cover infrastructure costs, which have risen due to AI companies scraping data.
- Bandwidth for multimedia content downloads has increased significantly, with bots accounting for a large portion of expensive requests.
- Human traffic to Wikipedia has reportedly declined as automated scrapers were misidentified as visitors.
- The foundation's effort to monetize content aims to sustain Wikipedia's work, as AI chatbots and search engines use its data without directing users to the site.