Why AI labs want real company data
The short answer
Labs want real company data because it shows how a real problem got solved, per micro1's CFO. Synthetic environments built by experts imitate the world. Epoch AI's review describes clone-built environments with no mention of real company data. The claim comes from companies with a stake in the data.
Two kinds of source speak to this. Vendors explain the pull. Researchers describe what labs build today.
What does micro1 say about real versus synthetic?
micro1's CFO described the ideal training environment as the real world itself. Environments that hired experts build can only imitate it. A real company's records show how a real problem got resolved: who asked, which spreadsheets and emails were involved, and what approvals followed (self-reported, recording date not stated).
Our page on what labs want from companies covers the chain micro1 describes, and how a lab's data team judges an offer covers what a lab says it looks for in an offer.
What do other public sources say?
Time reported that the archive behind Google's $10M winning bid for Spirit Airlines' data, pending court approval, would feed reinforcement learning environments, and that the data encodes how people carry out their jobs, with even poor decisions offering training value.
An expert quoted there said the purchase makes sense if you believe agents will generalize across the economy.
Epoch's FAQ, by Jean-Stanislas Denain and Chris Barber, says many enterprise-workflow environments rely on clones of apps such as Slack or SAP. It also says labs such as Cursor can use their own user data to build training tasks.
Does anyone argue synthetic data is enough?
Troveo, which licenses real data, wrote that synthetic data works best as a supplement and that evaluation data must be real. Our real versus synthetic page sets the two sides out.
What does this mean for a company with records?
The pull is plausible, and no public price ties it to your archive. Epoch's interviewees put a Slack-grade clone near $300,000, which shows what labs pay for a built version. Whether a lab pays more for a real one is the open question.
Before any record leaves, you need the right to license it. Start with the rights check and the free fit check.
micro1 may pay us a referral fee if a company we introduce goes ahead with it. How we are paid
Apply to micro1's data partnership (paid link)micro1's own data-partnerships pagePaid link. How we are paid
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. Ask for a referral
