Google Bought Spirit Airlines Data for $10 Million as AI Labs Hunt Scarce Training Material
Updated
Updated · MIT Technology Review · Oct 13
Google Bought Spirit Airlines Data for $10 Million as AI Labs Hunt Scarce Training Material
3 articles · Updated · MIT Technology Review · Oct 13
Summary
$10 million bought Google Spirit Airlines' archives in August bankruptcy proceedings, including 100 million emails, 500 million Teams messages and 176,000 employee records.
AI labs are turning to failed companies because public and synthetic datasets are reaching their limits, making real workplace archives newly valuable for training agents on complex tasks and judgment calls.
SimpleClosure and rival Sunset now broker those sales for shuttered startups; SimpleClosure says 47% of its wind-down deals include code or data and expects to return more than $10 million to startups by end-2026.
Privacy and ownership questions are mounting: Spirit's flight attendants' union objected, lawyers call some archives 'legally radioactive,' and sale proceeds usually go to creditors and investors rather than employees whose data was created at work.