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Wikipedia Marks 25 Years With New AI Licensing Deals and a Leadership Change

The new agreements aim to make AI companies help cover the costs their high‑volume use imposes on Wikipedia.

Overview

  • Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and Mistral signed paid access deals for Wikimedia Enterprise, expanding beyond Google’s 2022 agreement.
  • Wikimedia reports an estimated 8% drop in human pageviews in October 2025 as AI overviews cut clickthroughs, with bot scraping adding server load.
  • Enterprise access provides high‑volume, low‑latency data tailored for AI training, a model Wikimedia says is meant to sustain the site’s infrastructure.
  • CEO Maryana Iskander steps down on January 20 and will be succeeded by Bernadette Meehan in a planned transition.
  • Wikipedia remains central to AI training data and global information access even as editor recruitment falls and AI‑generated rivals like xAI’s Grokipedia surface.