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 as part of Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary.
The partnership is part of Wikimedia Enterprise, an initiative launched in 2021 that gives large companies access to a premium version of Wikipedia’s API for a fee. Lane Baker, senior director of earned revenue for the Wikimedia Foundation, explains The Verge This program provides a “tuned” version of Wikipedia for commercial use and AI companies. “We take feature requests, we build features and functionality, and try to structure the data in ways that support the needs of these companies,” says Baker.
The Wikimedia Foundation says that Microsoft, Perplexity, and Mistral AI have joined the enterprise program “over the past year”. Although the company lists Meta and Amazon as “existing” partners, this is the first time they have been publicly announced. Funds raised as part of the Wikimedia Enterprise are used to support non-profit projects, which Baker says can help him establish a more sustainable business.
“Supporting the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia is in every AI company’s best interest, because Wikipedia and all the other projects we support are so important to their business,” says Baker. “Finding a new sustainable balance with these new companies is important for our continued existence, but also for their continued existence.”
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