The Wikimedia Foundation, which manages Wikipedia, has announced partnerships with Microsoft, Perplexity, Mistral AI and other companies developing artificial intelligence models. The companies have joined the foundation's commercial platform, Wikimedia Enterprise.
The foundation launched this platform in 2021 to enable large IT companies to use Wikimedia content more efficiently. In 2022, the first customers of the service were Google and the Internet Archive. Later, partnerships were established with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI and Perplexity. Other partners include Ecosia, Pleias and ProRata.
The Wikimedia Foundation states that partner companies have access to the content of Wikimedia projects in the volume and speed that suits their needs. Wikipedia has more than 65 million articles in more than 300 languages and the number of monthly views reaches about 15 billion.
It is noted that Wikipedia's main source of income is small individual donations. However, the widespread use of open content to train artificial intelligence models has increased the load and costs on servers. Partnerships help ensure the sustainability of the online encyclopedia.
