Tech Giants Spend Millions on Wikipedia Data Access

The companies have joined Google as the latest members of the Wikimedia Enterprise program. The partnerships are 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 Becker, the Wikimedia Foundation's senior director of earned revenue, tells The Verge that the program offers a version of Wikipedia "tuned" for commercial use and AI companies.

"We take feature requests, we build features and functionality, and sort of try to structure the data in ways that support what these companies' needs are," Becker says. The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Perplexity, and Mistral AI joined the Enterprise program "over the past year." Though the company lists Meta and Amazon as "existing" partners, this is the first time they've been announced publicly. The funds collected as part of Wikimedia Enterprise go toward supporting the nonprofit's projects, which Becker says can help it establish a more sustainable business.

"It is in every AI company's best interest to support the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia and all the other projects that we support are so core to their business," Becker says.