Wikipedia Inks AI Deals with Microsoft, Meta and Perplexity on 25th Birthday

Wikipedia plans to use AI to assist editors and improve search experiences, while addressing criticism of bias and competition from rivals like Grokipedia.

Associated Press

Jan 29, 2026 — 4 min read

Photo of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, gestures during an interview with The Associated Press on the occasion of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, by Frank Augstein/AP

LONDON, Jan. 29, 2026 (AP) — Wikipedia unveiled new business deals with a slew of artificial intelligence companies on January 15, 2026, as it marked its 25th anniversary.

The online crowdsourced encyclopedia revealed that it has signed up AI companies including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Perplexity, Microsoft and France's Mistral AI.

Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of the early Internet, but that original vision of a free online space has been clouded by the dominance of Big Tech platforms and the rise of generative AI chatbots trained on content scraped from the web.

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AI Wikipedia Microsoft Meta Perplexity Amazon Mistral Big Tech Wikimedia foundation Google Ecosia Jimmy Wales Elon Musk X (Twitter) Maryana Iskander Bernadette Meehan Larry Sanger Grokipedia