Most advice about AI covers tools and policy. This guide covers your company's own records, what AI labs pay to use them, and the checks your CPA or fractional CFO can run before you decide anything.
What AI data licensing is
AI data licensing means your company lets an AI lab use its records for a set time, under written rules. The records are things like Slack threads, email, CRM notes and support tickets. Your company keeps ownership.
In plain words
Licensing means a lab uses your records for a while, under rules.
Think of it like this
Rent the room. Keep the house.
Labs borrow real work to teach software agents how work gets done. Epoch AI, a research group, reports that labs spend heavily on simulated workplaces for agents.
It also describes lab partnerships with product companies and does not discuss real company archives. So demand is real but still being tested.
In plain words
Labs want real work to learn from.
Think of it like this
Borrowed. Returned. No late fees.
What do public deals show?
Public prices are few. We track every one we can find, and your CPA can check each source.
- Small shutdowns. SimpleClosure sold archives from nearly 100 small companies at $10,000 to $100,000 per company, according to Gizmodo.
- A long history. Cielo24 sold 13 years of Slack, Jira and email for "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, per the same report.
- An airline archive. Google won the auction for Spirit Airlines' archive with a $10 million bid, and court approval is pending, per Time. Mercor bid $7.5 million, and micro1 later offered $12.5 million, per Fortune.
- Stated program tiers. micro1 lists $100,000 and up for qualified companies, $500,000 and up for large ones, and $1 million and up for highly unique data, per its page. That is micro1's own claim.
- Six figures. Troveo says typical full-company deals start at six figures, per its page. That is also self-reported.
No public price list exists, and Troveo says so itself. A range with a source is more useful to you and your CPA than a single number.
What risks should your CPA flag?
Ask your CPA or CFO to walk through these with you, in plain words.
- Other people's information. Email and chat hold customer and vendor secrets, often under NDAs. Daniel Goldberg, a partner at Frankfurt Kurnit, also flags trade secrets, waived privilege and protected employee talk in a 2026 note.
- Privacy law. Under California rules, licensing personal data can count as a sale unless names and details are stripped out, per Freshfields.
- Vendor terms. Salesforce limited bulk export and AI use of Slack data pulled through its tools in 2025, per Hunton.
- Old promises. The FTC says quiet changes to terms for AI training can be unfair or deceptive.
See the risks page for more in plain words.
Do your records fit?
Your CPA sees most of these signs in the books already. Go through them together.
- 30 or more staff. micro1 sets that floor, per micro1's partnership page.
- Years of Slack, email, CRM or ticket history that are still stored.
- A sale, merger, raise or wind-down on the horizon.
- A line in the books for SaaS tools that hold records, such as chat and ticketing.
- Someone on staff who knows where the admin logins live.
Our company data map helps you list the systems first. Bring the one-page result to your CPA.
Where to start
Run the free data check first. It takes about three minutes and gives you a result and one next step. Share the result with your CPA or CFO.
If you want to talk it through, send Matt a note. To see who licenses records and what each one asks for, read the buyer comparison.
Your annual review with your CPA is a good place for this, and so is your AI policy. The next guide covers the records line step by step.
