# AI data licensing deals: a dated roundup

> AI data licensing deals with public prices, dated: Spirit Airlines, SimpleClosure, Reddit and Google, Shutterstock and News Corp. Sources beside each.

By Matt Burns, Vaultfish. Canonical: https://vaultfish.com/answers/ai-data-licensing-deals  
Published: 2026-09-16  
Updated: 2026-10-14

## The short answer

Public AI data licensing deals fall into two groups. Company-data deals are few and recent. The largest is Google's $10M winning bid for Spirit Airlines' archive, pending court approval. Content deals are older and bigger, like Reddit and Google at about $60 million a year.

Here is a dated list of public prices. Each row says who reported it. A second table covers the content deals that sit next to the company-data market.

**$10M** Google's winning bid for Spirit Airlines' archive ([source](/answers/spirit-airlines-data-sale))

## Which company-data deals have a public figure?

| Deal | Date | Reported figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google's winning bid for Spirit Airlines' archive, pending court approval | Aug 2026 | $10M winning bid. Mercor alternate at $7.5M | [Time](https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/google-spirit-airlines-ai-data-RL/), [ombudsman's report](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysb.331039/gov.uscourts.nysb.331039.1684.0.pdf) for the alternate bidder |
| micro1 offer for the same archive | 14 Sep 2026 | $12.5M | [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/09/14/micro1-tries-to-beat-googles-bid-to-buy-bankrupt-spirit-airlines-data-for-12-5-million-highlighting-value-of-data-to-ai-companies/) |
| SimpleClosure Asset Hub | Apr 2026 | Nearly 100 deals, $10,000 to $100,000 each | [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916) |
| Mercor offers to shuttered startups | Aug 2026 | Up to $300,000, reported | [BigGo](https://finance.biggo.com/news/d34746c0-e437-4855-93c5-09c6e850550d) summary of The Information |

The Spirit sale has no court approval yet. See the [Spirit Airlines data sale](/answers/spirit-airlines-data-sale) for its status, and the [deals tracker](/deals) for each figure as it changes.

_A bid is not a sale. Always check the verb._

## Which content deals sit next to it?

| Deal | Date | Reported figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reddit and Google | Feb 2024 | About $60M a year | Reuters, via [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/reddit-signs-60-million-annual-training-data-deal-with-google/) |
| Reddit, licensing revenue | Aug 2026 | $43M "other revenue" in Q2 2026, about 5% of revenue | [Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/reddits-data-licensing-revenue-grew-125000998.html) |
| Shutterstock AI licensing | Jun 2024 | $104M in 2023, per its CEO | [Bloomberg Law](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/artificial-intelligence/shutterstocks-ai-licensing-business-generated-104-million) |
| News Corp and OpenAI | May 2024 | About $250M over five years, per the WSJ | [VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-partners-with-wall-street-journal-publisher-news-corp) |

Publishers' own filings add a revenue view. Wiley reported $49.1M of AI license revenue for its year to April 2026 in [Wiley's 2026 10-K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/107140/000162828026045111/jwa-20260430.htm). [What publishers earn from AI licensing](/answers/what-do-publishers-earn-from-ai-licensing) reads those numbers for a private company.

These content deals license published content with a clear source. A company's internal records are a different product. The deals show that buyers pay for licensed data. They say little about what an email or ticket archive earns.

## What does Troveo say it has paid?

Troveo says it has paid more than $20 million to rights holders across video, audio, gaming, robotics and now business data ([its guide](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/ai-data-licensing-deals), self-reported). The total covers every data type, so it can't stand in for what company-data owners get.

## What do the deals have in common?

Each public price attaches to a whole archive, a whole catalog or a company's published headline. No source I read publishes a price per record, per token or per employee.

Reddit adds a dry footnote. [Yahoo Finance's report](https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/reddits-data-licensing-revenue-grew-125000998.html) on its results says licensing is "immaterial today" next to advertising, which brought in $762 million in the same quarter.

## How should you read a roundup?

I check three things: the date, the reporter, and whether the number is a bid, a completed sale or a buyer's claim. My [pricing models page](/answers/data-monetization-pricing) explains how deals pay. [Who buys company data](/buyers) compares the buyers. The [rights check](/rights-check) comes before any price talk.

Figure: scale, Reported archive prices: SimpleClosure archive deals $10K to $100K, Google's winning bid for Spirit $10M (emphasized). Most reported archive prices sit far below the one big bid. Source: Gizmodo, Time, Fortune.

micro1 may pay us a referral fee if a company we introduce goes ahead with it. [How we are paid](https://vaultfish.com/disclosure)

Have a lawyer read any contract before you sign. They like that.

_Vaultfish helps you run the process. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. If you need counsel who knows this area, we can point you to one._

## Sources

- [Time](https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/google-spirit-airlines-ai-data-RL/)
- [ombudsman's report](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysb.331039/gov.uscourts.nysb.331039.1684.0.pdf)
- [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/09/14/micro1-tries-to-beat-googles-bid-to-buy-bankrupt-spirit-airlines-data-for-12-5-million-highlighting-value-of-data-to-ai-companies/)
- [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916)
- [BigGo](https://finance.biggo.com/news/d34746c0-e437-4855-93c5-09c6e850550d)
- [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/reddit-signs-60-million-annual-training-data-deal-with-google/)
- [Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/reddits-data-licensing-revenue-grew-125000998.html)
- [Bloomberg Law](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/artificial-intelligence/shutterstocks-ai-licensing-business-generated-104-million)
- [VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-partners-with-wall-street-journal-publisher-news-corp)
- [Wiley's 2026 10-K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/107140/000162828026045111/jwa-20260430.htm)
- [its guide](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/ai-data-licensing-deals)