Google paid $10 million for Spirit Airlines' internal data and software, beating a rival bid. The deal shows tech firms' scramble for training data beyond public sources.
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Google paid $10 million for internal data and custom software from bankrupt carrier Spirit Airlines, according to Chapter 11 court filings reviewed by Business Insider. The bid topped a $7.5 million offer from AI training startup Mercor.
A Google spokesperson told Business Insider the data "can be helpful in improving our products and AI models." The company is not buying customer or credit card information, the spokesperson said. Mercor did not respond to a request for comment. A Spirit Airlines representative declined to comment beyond the filings.
The auction was competitive. Google opened at $5 million. Mercor countered at $5.2 million, then offered $7 million if allowed to take raw data before anonymizing it. Google won with a final $10 million bid.
Tech companies are scouring bankruptcy estates, corporate archives, and private data sets as they exhaust open web sources for training material. Corporate data is especially useful for teaching AI systems to handle customer complaints, debug websites, or automate back-office tasks. AI training startup Micro1 earlier this year said it pays midsize companies $100,000 to $2 million for access to anonymized data.
Meta pursued a similar approach with a program that tracked workers' keystrokes and mouse movements to improve its AI's ability to control computers. The company suspended the initiative after an internal data leak and sharp employee backlash.
The Spirit Airlines deal underscores the lengths companies will go to feed more data into their models – and the new market emerging for bankrupt-company intellectual property that might otherwise gather dust.
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