- Big Tech, AI companies and search engines all help fund Wikipedia
- The Wikimedia Foundation has seven data centers globally
- Perplexity has given Wikipedia editors 2,500 free Enterprise slots
Tech giants including Ecosia, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Perplexity, Pleias and ProRata are some of the latest companies to sign up to pay the Wikimedia Foundation an undisclosed amount for premium access to Wikipedia content, the body announced in a post to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
Amazon, Google and Meta, some of the foundation’s former members, have already used the commercial API to “access content from Wikimedia projects at a volume and speed.”
This revenue is designed to support Wikimedia’s nonprofit mission and long-term sustainability, but there’s also a larger AI story at play.
The foundation emphasized that AI companies rely heavily on Wikipedia, so they have a vested interest in keeping it funded. Considered a core dataset for LLM training, Wikipedia is partially responsible for powering chatbots, search engines and voice assistants globally.
Wikimedia Foundation CPO/CTO Selena Deckelmann emphasized the importance of Wikipedia’s “human-driven knowledge” in the AI era. “Wikipedia shows that knowledge is human and knowledge needs people.”
In a post noting Wikimedia’s 25th anniversary, Perplexity noted that it would be giving 2,500 Enterprise seats to Wikipedia editors to show its appreciation for their output.
There are an estimated 250,000 volunteer editors contributing to the platform, which was launched in 2001.
Wikimedia now has seven operational data centers (according to its own data), though none trace their roots back to its inception in 2001 – one closed in 2004. The latest, located in São Paulo, Brazil, has been credited with improving load times for the country’s citizens by a third of a second.
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