Overview
- The Wikimedia Foundation announced new Wikimedia Enterprise partnerships that give major AI firms structured, high‑throughput access to its content, with financial terms undisclosed.
- Google has been an enterprise customer since 2022, and the expansion is intended to move heavy commercial reusers off free scraping onto paid, reliable APIs.
- Wikimedia reports about an 8% year‑over‑year decline in human pageviews in 2025 as AI summaries and chatbots answer questions without sending users to Wikipedia.
- Automated traffic is straining infrastructure, with multimedia bandwidth up roughly 50% since January 2024 and bots responsible for about 65% of the most costly requests.
- A leadership transition is set for January 20 as CEO Maryana Iskander departs and Bernadette Meehan takes over, while founder Jimmy Wales says AI companies should help pay for the load they create.