What has company data actually sold for?

Listed on Polyshares' own case-studies page under Construction: a perpetual exclusive license to the operational record of a general contractor, anonymized before delivery. Polyshares says company names stay confidential, and the page gives no date, record length or systems. Polyshares says it licenses the data, pays for it and supplies AI labs, and the company keeps its data. Its homepage says its founders licensed data on their own companies before buying from anyone else, and its partner bios name Roofer.com and Simplicity Solar among their past companies. The page does not say whether any case study is one of those companies. No outside report confirms the figure.

Listed on Polyshares' own case-studies page under Professional services: a perpetual exclusive license to the operational record of a global marketing agency, anonymized before delivery. Polyshares says company names stay confidential, and the page gives no date, record length or systems. Polyshares says it licenses the data, pays for it and supplies AI labs, and the company keeps its data. Its homepage says its founders licensed data on their own companies before buying from anyone else, and its partner bios name Roofer.com and Simplicity Solar among their past companies. The page does not say whether any case study is one of those companies. No outside report confirms the figure.

Listed on Polyshares' own case-studies page under Home services: a perpetual exclusive license to the operational record of a roofing company, anonymized before delivery. Polyshares says company names stay confidential, and the page gives no date, record length or systems. Polyshares says it licenses the data, pays for it and supplies AI labs, and the company keeps its data. Its homepage says its founders licensed data on their own companies before buying from anyone else, and its partner bios name Roofer.com and Simplicity Solar among their past companies. The page does not say whether any case study is one of those companies. No outside report confirms the figure.

Listed on Polyshares' own case-studies page under Energy: a perpetual exclusive license to the operational record of a solar company, anonymized before delivery. Polyshares says company names stay confidential, and the page gives no date, record length or systems. Polyshares says it licenses the data, pays for it and supplies AI labs, and the company keeps its data. Its homepage says its founders licensed data on their own companies before buying from anyone else, and its partner bios name Roofer.com and Simplicity Solar among their past companies. The page does not say whether any case study is one of those companies. No outside report confirms the figure.

micro1's own payment tiers, set per deal. Its stated eligibility: 30+ employees, mature operations and primarily English documentation. micro1's Enterprise Data Partnership listing adds $100K-$2M+ for approved data packages. Payment is compensation under the agreed data partnership, and micro1 says companies keep ownership of their underlying data. In an undated recorded forum talk, its CFO said deals near $2M are real, and micro1 staff gave a lower, earlier staff figure, which is history. No named company has publicly confirmed any of these figures. The page itself carries no date.

Handshake's own range, labelled indicative and not an offer. Its stated eligibility: 20+ full-time employees and 3+ years in operation. No named company has confirmed a figure.

Troveo's own figures. It says there is no public price list. The $850,000 example does not name the company or the buyers, and the revenue split between Troveo and the company is not published.

micro1 gave notice of a competing bid after the auction closed (notice dated 3 Sep 2026 on the docket). It is the highest figure reported for the archive, and the court has not accepted it. Fortune reported that the court's privacy watchdog said it needed more time to investigate micro1's bid.

Reported solicitations, not completed sales. The article does not name its own source, and other coverage points to The Information as the original source, which we could not confirm.

The largest court-recorded bid for a company archive, and still a bid. Google won the 14 Aug 2026 auction. A court-appointed privacy ombudsman said on 5 Oct 2026 that privacy steps were adequate. The hearing was moved from 14 Oct to 6 Nov 2026 (Travel Weekly, 9 Oct 2026). No sale order as of 10 Oct 2026. Flight attendants' and pilots' unions, a software vendor and a privacy group objected, and EPIC asked to file an amicus brief. The filed sale terms require de-identification that preserves "referential integrity", which the flight attendants' union says could let people be rebuilt. Passenger databases, loyalty records, about 30.9 million call recordings and privileged material are excluded (docket filings). The ombudsman wrote that she did not assess risk to employees.

Mercor was the runner-up at the 14 Aug 2026 auction. The sale to Google has not been approved, so the alternate bid has not been called on. The court's ombudsman noted in her 5 Oct 2026 report that Mercor had reported a security incident earlier in 2026.

SimpleClosure's own count, relayed by Forbes and Gizmodo. Individual deals and buyers are not named. The company says more than 350 companies have listed assets since April. We found no lawsuit or regulator action against a seller in this group, and a policy group asked the Senate Commerce Committee in April 2026 for FTC oversight.

The one named seller we found. The price is a phrase, not a figure, and the buyer is unnamed. This row rests on summaries of the Forbes and Fast Company reports plus a third-party tracker that rates its own entry medium confidence. Treat it as reported, not confirmed.

The case that shows what consent failure looks like. After the plan became public, users sued in Colorado federal court (Pierce v. Photobucket, No. 1:24-cv-03432) over biometric-privacy, consumer-protection and fraud claims. The docket metadata we saw showed the case terminated on 10 Mar 2026, and we found no reason. We could not open the original April 2024 Reuters report, so the per-photo price is unverified.

A content license, not a company archive, and the best-known price anchor. Reuters reported the figure from anonymous sources, and neither company confirmed it. Reports say FTC staff opened a non-public inquiry into Reddit's AI data licensing in 2024, and we found no outcome.