For Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, its parent organization Wikimedia announced enterprise partnerships with AI companies like Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Perplexity. These deals provide streamlined API access to Wikipedia's content, aiming to offset the massive server costs from AI chatbots scraping its 65 million articles for training data.

The move addresses a growing crisis for the nonprofit. Last year, Wikimedia warned that AI summaries and chatbots were causing a traffic decline, threatening its sustainability. By shifting big tech from free scraping to a commercial enterprise platform, Wikimedia seeks a sustainable funding model for its massive infrastructure needs.

Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, said partners recognized the need to commit to sustaining Wikipedia's work. While some companies joined over the past year, the official announcement coincides with the anniversary. These high-throughput APIs will serve not just Wikipedia but also projects like Wikivoyage and Wikibooks.