# Who bid on Spirit Airlines' data, and who else takes it?

> Google won Spirit Airlines' data auction with a $10M bid, pending court approval. Mercor bid $7.5M, micro1 later offered $12.5M and Handshake AI runs a program.

By Matt Burns, Vaultfish. Canonical: https://vaultfish.com/answers/who-buys-company-data-for-ai  
Published: 2026-10-01  
Updated: 2026-10-14

## The short answer

Time and the court's privacy ombudsman name the bidders: Google, which won the auction for Spirit Airlines' archive with a $10M bid, and Mercor, which bid $7.5M. micro1 later offered $12.5M for the same archive. Handshake AI runs a direct program. Google's deal still needs court approval.

The Spirit Airlines auction is the clearest public record of what companies will bid for company data. These are its bidders, plus the other names that have a public source.

For every company that could license your records, with terms and fees side by side, see [who buys company data for AI, compared](/buyers).

## Which named companies have bid or run programs?

- **Google.** It won the August 2026 bankruptcy auction for the Spirit Airlines archive with a $10M winning bid. The archive holds about 100 million emails, 500 million Teams chats and about 30 million lines of code ([Time](https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/google-spirit-airlines-ai-data-RL/)).
- **Mercor.** It bid $7.5M ([Time](https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/google-spirit-airlines-ai-data-RL/)) and is the alternate bidder ([ombudsman's report](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysb.331039/gov.uscourts.nysb.331039.1684.0.pdf)). Reports say it approached acquired and shuttered startups for Slack, Jira and email archives with offers up to $300,000 ([BigGo Finance](https://finance.biggo.com/news/d34746c0-e437-4855-93c5-09c6e850550d)).
- **micro1.** It offered $12.5M for the Spirit archive later ([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/)). It also runs a direct program for operating companies (self-reported).
- **[Handshake AI](/buyers/handshake-ai).** Its data partnerships page says it builds lab training environments from business operational data.

The Spirit sale needs the bankruptcy court's approval, and no sale order had been entered as of 10 Oct 2026.

The approval hearing was moved from 14 Oct to 6 Nov 2026, [Travel Weekly](https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/Court-delays-hearing-on-Google-purchase-of-Spirit-data) reported on 9 Oct 2026. Treat the $10M as a bid until a court approves it. The [deals tracker](/deals) follows it.

Figure: scale, Bids on Spirit Airlines' archive: Mercor $7.5M, Google, winning bid $10M (emphasized), micro1, later offer $12.5M. Google's winning bid sat between the other two figures. Source: Time and Fortune, reported bids.

## Who are the agent builders?

They build RL gyms. An RL gym is a simulated workplace stocked with real Slack threads, tickets and email, so an agent can practice an employee's job ([Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916), [Futurism](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/employer-selling-emails-train-ai)).

> **Labs want to see how real work gets done.** It's the library. They borrow real work and study how it went.

Marketplaces and vendors sit between them and owners. The end buyer is rarely named.

## What is missing from the public record?

Epoch AI's review of RL environments describes app replicas and lab partnerships with product companies, and does not discuss real company archives ([Epoch](https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/state-of-rl-envs)). Outside Spirit, I found no named enterprise AI vendor buying company email or support archives.

If email is what you hold, [licensing company emails to AI](/answers/sell-company-emails-to-ai) covers what to check first.

For labs by name, see [license data to OpenAI](/answers/sell-data-to-openai) and [license data to Anthropic](/answers/sell-data-to-anthropic).

_Ask any marketplace, this site included, who its buyers are and who pays whom._

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.

[Apply to micro1's data partnership (paid link)](https://req.micro1.ai/post/74520e8b-4673-4da5-b855-53609aaf6710?referralCode=f82e519e-5d64-4e0e-9574-760c84371cf2&utm_source=referral&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=data_referral) · [micro1's own data-partnerships page](https://www.micro1.ai/data-partnerships)

_Paid link. [How we are paid](https://vaultfish.com/disclosure)_

_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)
- [BigGo Finance](https://finance.biggo.com/news/d34746c0-e437-4855-93c5-09c6e850550d)
- [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/)
- [Travel Weekly](https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/Court-delays-hearing-on-Google-purchase-of-Spirit-data)
- [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916)
- [Futurism](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/employer-selling-emails-train-ai)
- [Epoch](https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/state-of-rl-envs)