Research
Publicly documented company data deals and price claims
Five findings
- One named completed sale. Cielo24, a defunct company, reportedly sold 13 years of Slack, email and Jira history for "hundreds of thousands of dollars". The buyer is unnamed and the report is secondary (Forbes).
The biggest court figure is still a bid. Google's $10M bid won the 14 Aug 2026 auction for Spirit Airlines' archive: about 100 million emails, 500 million Teams items and 30 million lines of code (court docket, Time).
The hearing was moved from 14 Oct to 6 Nov 2026 (Travel Weekly, 9 Oct 2026). No sale order as of 10 Oct 2026.
- Three offers, one archive. Mercor was the $7.5M alternate bidder at that auction. micro1 made a late $12.5M offer after it closed (Fortune, 14 Sep 2026). We mark the three Spirit rows as related observations of one archive. Count them as one case.
Published ranges are marketing claims. SimpleClosure says it has done nearly 100 archive deals in about a year at $10,000 to $100,000 per company, by its own count (Gizmodo).
Handshake AI's ceiling is "$4M+", which it labels an indicative estimate and not an offer (Handshake AI). No named company has confirmed a figure in this group.
- Two rows rest on a court record. Both are Spirit bids. Every other row rests on a press report or on the company's own figures (court docket).
Method
Every row in this study is a row in the deals tracker, frozen on the date above.
Where we searched. Court dockets through the CourtListener RECAP archive (the Spirit Airlines case, No. 25-11897), national, business and trade press, and the pages AI data companies and marketplaces publish about their own programs.
What gets a row. One of these has to exist:
- a court filing or news report that records a price, bid or offer for company or user data sold or licensed for AI training,
- a price range an AI data company or marketplace publishes about itself, marked self-reported,
- a named seller's sale plan that drew a lawsuit, even with no price, because the fallout is part of the cost (Photobucket).
What stays out. Whole-company acquisitions (they price the business, not the data), publisher and media licensing deals, private figures told to us, and any number we cannot trace to a filing or a report.
Reddit's reported $60M a year license with Google stays in, in the context group, because it is the best-known price anchor. It is a content license and neither company confirmed the figure.
How we group rows. Each row sits in one group by its status: completed sales, bids and offers (none closed), published price ranges, or context. Rows that are offers for the same archive are marked related, so three Spirit bids read as one case.
Prices stay as the source states them. We never average a range, turn a phrase like "six figures" into a number, or work out a price per employee.
The study has no totals, averages or medians, inside a group or across groups. Self-reported figures carry that label in the table and a yes in the CSV's self_reported column.
Dates are event dates: the auction, the report or the statement. micro1's tiers page carries no date, so its row uses the day we read it. Events run from 22 Feb 2024 to 6 Oct 2026.
Known gaps. Private deals under confidentiality terms never reach the public record, so this set undercounts them. Two rows rest partly on reports we could not open (Forbes and Fast Company for Cielo24, Reuters for Photobucket), and those rows say so in their notes.
We read the Spirit docket through the RECAP mirror, which lags the court. The 9 Oct 2026 notice that moved the Spirit hearing was not on it when we looked, so that row cites Travel Weekly for the move.
The dataset, by group
11 rows in four groups, oldest first inside each. The same data is in the CSV download, with a category column, and the markdown version.
Completed sales (1 row)
A press report, or the buyer itself, says a deal closed. No court or party has published the contract.
| Buyer or program | Date | Records from | Figure as stated | Status | Evidence | Records covered | Notes | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Undisclosed AI buyer | Cielo24 (defunct, via SimpleClosure) | "Hundreds of thousands of dollars", as reported | Reported completed | Secondary source only | 13 years of Slack messages, Email, Jira tickets, Multi-terabyte Google Drive archive | The one named seller we found. The price is a phrase, not a figure, and the buyer is unnamed.Full notesThe 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. |
Bids and offers, none closed (4 rows)
Figures offered for data. None of these has closed. Rows that share an archive are related observations of one archive, not independent deals.
| Buyer or program | Date | Records from | Figure as stated | Status | Evidence | Records covered | Notes | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Aviation Holdings (Spirit Airlines, in Chapter 11) | $10M winning bid | Pending court approval | Court record plus press | About 100 million emails, About 500 million Teams items, About 30 million lines of code, Employee and payroll records | One of 3 related observations of the Spirit Airlines archive, not an independent deal. The largest court-recorded bid for a company archive, and still a bid. The hearing was moved to 6 Nov 2026, with no sale order as of 10 Oct 2026.Full notesThe 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 | Spirit Aviation Holdings (Spirit Airlines, in Chapter 11) | $7.5M alternate bid | Bid, not accepted | Court record plus press | Same Spirit archive as the Google bid | One of 3 related observations of the Spirit Airlines archive, not an independent deal. 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.Full notesMercor 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. | ||
| Mercor | Shuttered and acquired startups (for example Warmly, per the report) | Offers of up to $300,000 reported | Offers reported | Press report | Slack logs, GitHub records, Asana files, Google Drive documents, Meeting transcripts and recordings | Reported solicitations, not completed sales. The article does not name its own source.Full notesReported 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. | ||
| micro1 | Spirit Aviation Holdings (Spirit Airlines, in Chapter 11) | $12.5M reported offer | Bid, not accepted | Press report | Same Spirit archive as the Google bid | One of 3 related observations of the Spirit Airlines archive, not an independent deal. micro1 gave notice of a competing bid after the auction closed. It is the highest figure reported for the archive, and the court has not accepted it.Full notesmicro1 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. |
Published price ranges (4 rows)
Ranges that AI data companies and marketplaces publish about their own programs. They are self-reported marketing claims, and no named company has confirmed a figure.
| Buyer or program | Date | Records from | Figure as stated | Status | Evidence | Records covered | Notes | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Undisclosed AI companies and labs | Shut-down startups, through SimpleClosure Asset Hub | $10,000 to $100,000 per company, nearly 100 deals in about a year | Self-reported range | Self-reported by the company | Slack, email and workspace data, Source code | SimpleClosure's own count, relayed by Forbes and Gizmodo. Individual deals and buyers are not named.Full notesSimpleClosure'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. | ||
| Troveo's buyers (unnamed) | Companies licensing through Troveo | Typical full-company deals start at six figures. Example dataset: $850,000 across four sales. Single repository: about $5,000, an unnamed platform's baseline it cites. Startup archives: $10,000 to $100,000 | Self-reported range | Self-reported by the company | Business data from about 30 systems, Source code | Troveo's own figures. It says there is no public price list.Full notesTroveo'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. | ||
| Handshake AI | Not stated | $100K to $4M+. Calculator example: $383,083 to $896,969 for 100 employees and 10 years | Self-reported range | Self-reported by the company | Operational data from businesses (types not itemized) | Handshake's own range, labelled indicative and not an offer. No named company has confirmed a figure.Full notesHandshake'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. | ||
| micro1 | Undated | Not stated | Tiers of $100K+, $500K+ and $1M+. Enterprise Data Partnership listing: $100K-$2M+ for approved data packages | Self-reported range | Self-reported by the company | Slack, Email, CRM, Tickets, SOPs and knowledge bases | micro1's own payment tiers, set per deal. No named company has publicly confirmed any of these figures.Full notesmicro1'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. |
Context (2 rows)
Announced plans and unconfirmed reports. They show how the market behaves, and none is a confirmed company data sale.
| Buyer or program | Date | Records from | Figure as stated | Status | Evidence | Records covered | Notes | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| About $60M a year, reported | Reported, unconfirmed | Press report | User-generated posts and comments | A content license, not a company archive, and the best-known price anchor. Neither company confirmed the reported figure.Full notesA 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. | ||||
| Unnamed technology companies (talks reported) | Photobucket | Not disclosed in the sources we could open. Press coverage of the CEO's remarks cites 5 cents to $1 per photo, unverified | Announced, no price | Secondary source only | About 13 billion user photos and videos | The case that shows what consent failure looks like. Users sued after the plan became public, and the per-photo price is unverified.Full notesThe 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. |
How to cite this study
Burns, M. (2026). Publicly documented company data deals and price claims. Vaultfish. Published 9 Oct 2026, data through 10 Oct 2026. https://vaultfish.com/research/what-company-data-sells-for
This URL is permanent. When rows change, the page keeps its address and the dates above move. Cite the date you read it.
The data is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: chart it, quote it or build on it, and credit Vaultfish with a link to this page.
For journalists
Writing about AI data deals? Matt Burns can walk you through any row, share what sits behind it and give a comment on the record. The data is CC BY 4.0, so chart or quote it freely and link this page.
Corrections
Newest first. Each entry says what changed on this page, its markdown version and the CSV.
Retitled to "Publicly documented company data deals and price claims" (it was "Publicly documented company data deals and buyer price claims").
The group of self-published ranges is now "Published price ranges" (it was "Buyer marketing ranges") and the bids group is now "Bids and offers, none closed".
The ranges group includes micro1's partnership tiers, and micro1 runs data partnerships in which companies keep ownership, so the old label described it wrongly.
Renamed four CSV columns to match the table headings: "buyer" is now "buyer_or_program", "data_sold" is now "records_covered", "seller" is now "records_from" and "price_as_stated" is now "figure_as_stated".
Some rows are programs, such as micro1's company-data partnerships, where the company keeps ownership of its data.
- Retitled to "Publicly documented company data deals and buyer price claims". The old title claimed complete coverage, which a search like ours cannot promise. The address stays the same.
- Split the rows into separate groups: completed sales, bids and pending court sales, buyer marketing ranges, and context. The CSV gains category and related_to columns.
- The Spirit Airlines hearing was moved from 14 Oct to 6 Nov 2026 (Travel Weekly, 9 Oct 2026). No sale order as of 10 Oct 2026.
- Removed the price-per-lost-job comparison for the Spirit bids from our guides and answers. This study never printed it. Also removed a chart here that set Google's bid against SimpleClosure's top self-reported price.
- Updated the micro1 wording to describe company-data partnerships in which companies keep ownership of their data.
Missing a deal?
Send the source. A row goes in once we can name the filing or report behind it, and a status moves when a sale closes or fails. The Spirit hearing on 6 Nov 2026 is the next date to watch.
Send a correction through the contact form Open the live tracker
