Wikimedia inks licensing deals giving AI firms paid Wikipedia access

The Wikimedia Foundation said it has signed commercial licensing agreements with a slate of major technology companies, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon, AI search startup Perplexity and France’s Mistral AI, to provide programmatic, paid access to Wikipedia through its Wikimedia Enterprise product. The foundation unveiled the arrangements on the 25th anniversary of Wikipedia, framing the deals as a move to sustain the nonprofit as high-volume commercial use of its volunteer-produced content grows.

Under the new agreements, companies will receive Wikipedia content “at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs,” enabling integration of human-curated encyclopedia material into large language models, chatbots, search services and voice assistants. Wikimedia Enterprise supplies tailored APIs and delivery methods intended for large-scale training and production use, shifting some heavy users from the site’s free public platform to a commercial model for bulk access. The foundation did not disclose financial terms or pricing details of the transactions.

Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, said, "Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies' work that they need to figure out how to support financially." The foundation stressed the value of human-created and curated knowledge in an era of rapid AI adoption, noting that Wikipedia hosts roughly 65 million articles in more than 300 languages, attracts nearly 15 billion article views a month and is maintained by about 250,000 volunteer editors worldwide.

Wikimedia officials cited operational pressures and changing traffic patterns as central to the decision to pursue enterprise licensing. The foundation reported an approximate 8 percent decline in human traffic alongside increasing bot visits, some of which can disguise themselves to evade detection and impose heavy loads on servers. Those shifts have raised the cost and complexity of running the global site and strengthened the case for commercial arrangements with companies that rely heavily on Wikipedia content.

The deals extend a multiyear effort by the foundation to monetize high-volume commercial use of its content. Google was an early enterprise customer under a 2022 licensing agreement, and Wikimedia has previously entered enterprise or licensing arrangements with a range of smaller firms. The recent wave of contracts mirrors a broader industry trend in which publishers and content owners are negotiating direct licensing deals with AI developers and platform operators.

Microsoft offered a statement about the partnership’s wider objectives. Tim Frank, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, said, "Access to high-quality, trustworthy information is at the heart of how we think about the future of AI … (With Wikimedia), we're helping create a sustainable content ecosystem for the AI internet, where contributors are valued." Other partners were named but the foundation released no additional partner statements or contractual specifics.

The announcements arrived alongside a governance change: former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Bernadette Meehan is set to become Wikimedia’s chief executive effective Jan. 20, 2026. As Wikimedia transitions some heavy commercial users to paid access, the agreements will test whether licensing can stabilize funding while preserving open access, volunteer stewardship and public trust in a repository that has become a foundational resource for both people and machines.