On 17 November we will celebrate a new edition of our Xataka Verisure 2026 Awards. As is tradition, a very special award will be added to the long list of technological devices awarded by our jury that serves as the highlight of the gala every year: the award Xataka legend.
This recognition, given to individuals who have contributed to the state of technology as we know it over the past decades, has passed through the accomplished hands of Pedro Duque in 2021, Margrethe Vestager in 2022, Matt Mullenweg in 2023 and Stella Li in 2025.
Today we are proud to announce Jimmy WalesFounder of Wikipedia, as 2026 Xataka Leyenda Award.
Wells will be with us in Madrid on November 17 and as every year, our director Maria Gonzalez will have a long chat with him on stage. The delivery of Xataka Leyenda is the highlight of the awards, a festival full of recognition for the best technological product of the year. If you’re interested in attending, you can still get a ticket here, in addition to following them live streaming.
What does Wikipedia contribute to humanity?
There are many ways to explain the legacy of a technology. We can talk about big numbers, active users, millions of dollars in revenue, operational years. All these metrics are relevant but, sometimes, they don’t carry the importance of a single innovation in the lives of millions of people. Wikipedia is undoubtedly one of those inventions.
Jimmy Wells was born in the United States in 1966 and, after studying finance at the University of his home state, Alabama, entered the financial sector. It was there that he had his first contact with the emerging world of the Internet, co-founding Bomi’s And making enough money to finance the project he had in mind would transform the network.
After a first unsuccessful trial – Nupedia -, Wells and Larry Sanger hit the bottom line: Wikipedia, an open encyclopedia model, edited by its own users and whose knowledge is freely disseminated to all humanity. Wikipedia’s success was astounding, rapidly increasing its number of articles and active users.
Protect your home from theft and vandalism The Verisure Smart Lock is available as part of the Verisure Alarm System. Apart from allowing you to open the door using your key or from your mobile, Warn of any tampering attempts and send the information to the company’s central unit to generate an alarm. Discover the solution that best suits your needs home or business.
Advice provided by the brand
In 2003, Wells decided to make Wikipedia a non-profit, run by Wikimedia Foundation.
That was the germ of what is today one of the great staples, if not the great staple, that is the backbone of our digital experience. Wikipedia has a history of 25 years, is a repository of more than 65 million articles in countless languages and accumulates about 15,000 million monthly views. Statistics, again, that represent a fraction of the importance Wikipedia has had in the lives of millions of people since its birth.
Wikipedia is the gateway to any knowledge today, the result of the selfless passion of thousands of editors who preserve its content for those who want to use it. I have personally spent time reading articles and learning things that would have been very difficult to learn otherwise. Its value is elusive.
Future Wales and the Challenges of Wikipedia
One that faces a short-term challenge. The advent of AI has brought the argument for the “democratization of knowledge” to a paroxysm, with anyone who has access to chatgpt oa Claude Ask your most advanced model questions of all kinds. It also opened up a threat: the insertion of AI-generated content into Wikipedia.
Wells remains steadfast in the face of the great AI revolution: he considers that its value continues to be “human-verified knowledge” and that much of the weight of AI bots demanding access to its content falls on Wikipedia’s shoulders.
The latter, as we’ve seen, is a major point of contention between Wikipedia and AI chatbots. Since January, Wikimedia Enterprises has reached an agreement with some of the industry’s biggest players, such as Amazon or Microsoft, to charge for access to encyclopedia content. Wikipedia, however, has noted the rise of LLMs: their human traffic fell by 8% last year, acting as both source and victim of AI.
We’ll be talking about all this and more at the Xataka Awards on November 17. Undoubtedly, these are exciting times for every tech lover. And undoubtedly one constant will remain with us through so many changes and revolutions: Wikipedia. The great free encyclopedia has been with us for 25 years. Wells’ great ideas changed our relationship to knowledge in a radical and unprecedented way in history.
For all this, this will be our Xataka Leyenda 2026 award.
Picture | Xatala
In Xataka | All our knowledge is basically Wikipedia: it appears in 80% of Google results
