Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are paying up for ‘enterprise’ access to Wikipedia

• Big Tech, AI firms, and search engines all help to fund Wikipedia
• The Wikimedia Foundation has seven data centers globally
• Perplexity has gifted Wikipedia editors 2,500 free Enterprise seats

Tech giants including Ecosia, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Perplexity, Pleias, and ProRata are some of the latest companies to have signed up to pay the Wikimedia Foundation an undisclosed amount for premium access to Wikipedia content, the body announced in a post to commemorate its 25-year anniversary.

Amazon, Google, and Meta, some of the Foundation's earlier members, have already been using the commercial API to 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 bigger AI story at play.