Google Acquires Spirit Airlines Data for $10 Million to Train AI Models Amid Privacy Concerns

Spirit in the machine.

Google won a $10 million bankruptcy auction to acquire a hefty collection of business data from the now defunct Spirit Airlines, which it plans to use for AI training. The data, which includes calendar info, documents, spreadsheets, emails, and employee chats will be "deidentified," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Axios: "We will not receive any personal information from this dataset. Any data we receive will be rigorously scrubbed of any personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt."

Google buys Spirit Airlines data for AI training for just $10 million -- purchase includes hundreds of millions of emails, Microsoft Teams chats, billions of flight pricing records, and anonymized passenger records

This treasure trove of data came at a relatively affordable $10 million. Spirit Airlines, which declared bankruptcy and shut down on the 2nd of May this year, is selling all its assets in bankruptcy court auctions to pay off its roughly $8.1 billion in debt. According to Bloomberg Law, Google LLC beat out Mercor.io Corp. -- an AI-focused recruitment firm -- to the airline's data, with the AI tech giant offering $10 million, $2.5 million higher than the latter's $7.5 million bid. Nevertheless, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York named Mercor.io Corp. as the backup buyer in case the Google deal falls through. Google said it planned to use the massive amounts of data it purchased for training its AI LLMs, and the amount of data that the tech giant got its hands on is indeed a lot. Court records reveal that the Google purchase includes 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, 7.2 billion records for competitors' flights, 7.5 billion passenger transaction records from 2008, and more than 175,000 employee records from 1986. Aside from this, the company will also get information on revenue, aircraft operations, employee productivity records, audits and fraud, marketing campaigns, human resources records, project management, and pricing curve data, among others. This could be a cause of concern for anyone who's ever transacted with the airline, either as a customer, employee, contractor, or even investor, especially as AI is known for its privacy problems. However, the company will not get access to personal data, including the 97.5 million passenger profiles that the airline kept or the 50.2 million customer records from the Free Spirit loyalty program. Furthermore, the court said that all the data being turned over to Google will be "rigorously scrubbed of any personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt." The tech giant is seemingly keen on getting its hands on unique data, especially as many companies are now suspected of acquiring thousands of books to train their AI models after they've already scraped huge swathes of the internet. Spirit Airlines data is valuable because it's likely not readily available on the internet and contains specialized information gathered from decades of operation as an airline. Google can then use this to create AI models focused on aviation and offer its services to airlines. We're still unsure how AI will fit inside aviation operations, especially as it's a conservative, safety-focused industry. Nevertheless, Google and other AI companies are probably keen on entering it, especially as air travel is only projected to grow in the coming years. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Google buys crashed airline Spirit's data at auction, because AI

Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit. Spirit hit financial turbulence when COVID-19 blew in during 2020 and started making losses. Its balance sheet never climbed back to a safe altitude and in May 2026 the airline grounded itself permanently. The low-cost carrier entered liquidation to wind itself up and is now auctioning assets to raise cash and settle at least some of its debts. A court document [PDF] filed last week reveals that one of the assets up for sale is a huge trove of deidentified data, which Google bid for and won for just $10 million. For that sum, Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records. 600,000 ServiceNow tickets are another element of the collection, along with 13.7 million active emails addresses from Oracle's Responsys marketing application, and details of 11 million sales of in-flight Wi-Fi services. There's also operational data in the trove, describing over 763,000 flights, five million crew pairings, more than 1.2 million fuel slips, and records describing purchases of 787,452 parts. Google has reportedly said it bought the data to improve its AI services. The underbidder was Mercor, a company that provides data to train AI models. So clearly Spirit's data is of value to AI companies. Indeed, The Register recently reported how AI experts increasingly believe large language models are blunt instruments, and that smaller models trained on specific fields of knowledge are more useful in some applications. Google might have itself the basis for an aviation ops model, or with all sorts of quotidian financial records that could be useful for another AI. If you've flown Spirit and worry that Google will soon know about a testy conversation you had with the airline's call center, you're being told not to worry. The court filing says the data was deidentified before being put on sale and Google has promised to scrub any PII it finds in the trove. The Register awaits evidence of the inevitable errors that mean some personal info appears as the result of a future prompt, or search. Fasten your seat belts! ®

Google pays $10 million for 100 million Spirit Airlines emails and 500 million Teams chats to train AI

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. What just happened? Google has won an auction for Spirit Airlines' internal data, offering $10 million for the defunct carrier's workplace communications, operational records, documents, and custom software. The tech giant plans to use the material to improve its products and train AI models. However, the sale still requires approval from a federal bankruptcy judge at a hearing on Wednesday. The proposed purchase covers employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars, marketing material, aircraft operations, revenue management, and worker productivity data. Court documents show that the archive contains around 100 million emails and 500 million Teams chats. The collection also reportedly contains 17 million OneDrive files, more than 20 million SharePoint items, and 516 code repositories holding about 30 million lines of custom software. Google will also receive pricing models, booking curves, flight records, crew schedules, fuel slips, financial databases, IT support tickets, and customer-service workflows. Unlike material scraped from websites, these records show how people make decisions, coordinate with colleagues, fix mistakes, and navigate business systems - all of which could help train AI agents that are designed to perform workplace tasks. The auction began with a $5 million offer from Google. AI training startup Mercor then entered the process and was ultimately named backup bidder with a $7.5 million proposal. Google secured the assets after increasing its offer to $10 million. The company says it's not buying Spirit's customer or credit-card information, so don't worry too much if you previously traveled with the airline. A third party will remove personally identifiable information (PII) from the material before it's transferred, with Google paying the anonymization costs. Google will also be prohibited from attempting to identify people from the sanitized data. Cleaning decades of employee emails and workplace chats is unlikely to be straightforward, though. These conversations can contain sensitive details and enough contextual information to reveal identities even after names, addresses, and other obvious markers have been stripped away. Spirit ceased operations earlier this year after failing to emerge from its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Attorneys handling its estate have since been selling its remaining assets, including its enormous trove of data. The deal is a much larger example of the market for failed startups' internal data that emerged earlier this year as part of the race to obtain more AI training material.

Former Spirit Employees Aren't Happy About Its AI Deal With Google

The late Spirit Airlines, which shut down all operations earlier this year after filing for bankruptcy for a second time, agreed on Friday to give Google a vast trove of its company records for (what else?) training new AI models. Its former flight attendants have organized to fight back against the deal. On Tuesday, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), a union representing the ex-Spirit employees, filed an official objection to the agreement in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. It argues that while the terms of the deal require all consumer information to be carefully scrubbed from Spirit's data, no such protections are in place for the thousands of flight attendants who used to work for the airline. Announced after Google offered a successful bid of $10 million for the defunct airline's records (beating AI training startup Mercor's bid of $7.5 million), the deal stipulates that Google must work with a third-party "deidentification agent" to ensure no sensitive information that can be linked back to Spirit customers makes it into the soon-to-be training data, following a standard laid out in the California Consumer Privacy Act. But the CCPA -- as its name indicates -- "was built for customers, and no comparable screen has been applied to the employment record that this transaction actually conveys," AFA's lawyer Charles Rubio writes in the objection. That record, according to Friday's court filing, includes "employee business travel records," "crew training records," "employee tax forms," and 100 million emails. The fact that the names of former employees will not be included in the data when it's handed over to Google is beside the point, according to Rubio. "A pseudonymized dataset can still disclose which crew bases generated grievances, how a small subset of flight attendants performed on recurrent training, which employees were subject to investigation, what compensation adjustments followed which events, and what employees said to one another about management, staffing, or their union." Rubio goes on to argue that the deal should be rejected by a judge unless it "expressly and categorically [excludes] all flight attendant information" from the data that would be transferred to Google. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the bankruptcy court postponed the approval of the $10 million deal following the AFA's objection. As AI grows, so too does its appetite for training data. Big tech companies have already harvested most of the content on the internet to feed their gargantuan foundation models, forcing them to get creative in their search for more. So-called synthetic data has been touted as a way to continue feeding the algorithmic beast indefinitely, but that can lead to problems of its own. Google's aiming to take another approach with its multimillion-dollar Spirit deal. Taken as a whole, the swathe of records from the bankrupt budget airline comprises a detailed picture of day-to-day life inside a modern business. All that training data could in turn help Google make its AI tools more useful for enterprise customers, which are widely viewed as a key demographic for developers. And at a time when the internet giant has been losing a steady stream of AI talent to competitors, it could use all the help it can get.

Spirit Airlines data: Google chose its own anonymisation agent

Everyone reporting this deal leaned on one word: deidentified. The sale agreement filed on 14 August says the buyer designates the agent, the buyer pays for the work, and the scrub must preserve referential integrity across the data set. Google has agreed to pay $10mn for what a dead airline knew. A judge considers the sale on Wednesday morning. Reuters reported the price on Monday. Every account of the deal rests on one word. The data is deidentified, so nobody need worry. The Spirit Airlines data sale agreement, filed with the bankruptcy court on 14 August, says three things about that process which have gone unreported. Read together they change what the word is worth. Google picks the firm that does the scrubbing Coverage has described an independent third party cleaning the data before Google receives it. The contract is more specific. Spirit must deliver the material to one or more third parties "acceptable to or designated by Buyer". Google chooses the agent. Google also pays. The agreement makes the buyer solely responsible for every cost of deidentification, and states that those costs do not reduce the purchase price. The $10mn is the headline, not the bill. Google then gets to inspect the work. Spirit must give the buyer a reasonable opportunity to review and comment on the process. It must give good faith consideration to those comments. The standard is a scrub reasonably satisfactory to Google. None of that is improper. It is standard commercial drafting. It is simply not what an independent audit sounds like. The scrub has to keep the records linked This is the clause that matters most, and it is the one nobody quoted. The agent must certify the work against the California Consumer Privacy Act standard. Health-related material goes to the federal health privacy rule. Both apply whether or not those laws would otherwise reach this data, which is a real protection. Then the sentence ends with a condition. The certification must hold "while preserving referential integrity across the data set". Referential integrity means the joins survive. The joins survive by design. One pseudonymous person still runs from an email, to a support ticket, to a code commit, to a payroll record. That is exactly what makes the archive valuable for training agents. It is also the property that makes any anonymisation fragile, and the contract requires it. What is actually in the box The schedule of Spirit Airlines data is more specific than the summaries suggested. It lists 100 million emails across 80,000 accounts and 500 million Teams messages. Add 17,082,644 OneDrive files, 20,577,677 SharePoint files and 667,563 IT tickets. James Nani first reported the headline volumes for Bloomberg Law. The engineering side runs to 516 repositories and roughly 30 million lines of code. It also carries 372,585 commits, 43,170 pull requests, and the pipeline logs around them. The operational data is enormous. It covers 763,391 flights and 5,014,676 crew pairings. It holds 190,312,864 booking records and 7,510,221,520 transactions reaching back to May 2008. Disruption and reaccommodation add 3,000,347,472 rows. Then the corporate interior: board presentations, budget walkthroughs, deal pipelines, due diligence reports, investment committee papers, lender materials and merger fairness opinions. And the staff The schedule lists 175,658 employee records, with the system of record running from August 1986. It adds 3,426,618 payroll records and 148,018 employee tax forms. Then 1,092,000 time cards, training records, recruiting files and travel requests. Roughly 17,000 people lost their jobs when Spirit stopped flying on 2 May. Their correspondence, pay history and tax paperwork are line items in a schedule now. They signed employment contracts, not data licences. In a Chapter 11 estate the distinction does not arise. What Spirit kept, and what it may still sell The schedule marks the customer side not included throughout. The volumes are large: 97.5 million customer profiles, 50.2 million Free Spirit members, 740,000 card holders, 30,865,471 call recordings and 15,784,473 chat sessions. Regulatory records sit on the same side of the line. That includes 2,491,715 disability service requests, denied boarding data and complaints to the Department of Transportation. One clause is worth reading closely. Spirit may not sell the assets to anyone but Google, with a single exception: it may sell its customer data list, including individual traveller spend aggregated by year, to buyers in the hospitality or travel industries. So this sale did not shield the passengers. It separated them, and the estate kept the right to market them elsewhere. Axios reported the exclusions on Monday. The bidding, and what it revealed Google opened at $5mn. Mercor, an AI data company, countered at $5.2mn, then offered $7mn if it could take the raw data first and anonymise it itself, Business Insider reported. Google closed at $10mn. A bidder priced the unscrubbed version above its own bid for the scrubbed one. Mercor, which sought a $20bn valuation in July, remains the backup buyer at $7.5mn. Google had been in diligence for a while. The agreement references a confidentiality agreement with Spirit dated 18 June. Why an airline The value is not text to pretrain on. It is a chain of consequence. The archive connects a ticket to the emails about it, the commit that followed, the review thread and the operational result. Agents completing multi-step work need exactly that, and scraped text cannot supply it. Google has airline-specific reasons too. Google Cloud signed a five-year partnership with Ryanair on 12 August covering fleet operations and maintenance scheduling. It fits a pattern. Google is in talks to pay $1.5bn for a 35-person startup building coding environments, and China hit the same wall on training material this month. Meta tried collecting this kind of material from live staff and paused the programme after a revolt. An estate has nobody left to object. What would settle it Almost nobody can object now. The deadline for written objections passed at 4pm on 17 August, and the court required anyone attending to register by 11am on 18 August. Judge Sean H. Lane hears the Spirit Airlines data sale at 11am on 19 August, over Zoom. Two questions outlast it. Who audits a deidentification that the buyer designed, paid for and approved. And who buys the customer list, given the estate kept the right to sell it.

Google just bought a bunch of Spirit Airlines data for AI training

As the AI race continues to hunt for new data to use for AI training, Google has just purchased a huge dump of old data from the now-defunct Spirit Airlines to be "helpful" in training its AI models. Spirit Airlines, a low-cost airline in the US that was already dealing with financial struggles, abruptly shut down earlier this year in the midst of skyrocketing fuel costs during the height of the conflict in Iran. Now, bankruptcy auctions are underway around the remainder of the airline's assets, and Google was one of the buyers. Google wasn't interested in Spirit for the sake of aviation, but rather for all of the data left behind by the airline. Bloomberg Law reports that a $10 million bid from Google included data on operations and business, as well as software code, all of which will be used to train AI models. Google, in a brief statement, said: We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models. This data won't include personal information, though. Google says that the data will be "rigorously scrubbed of any personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt" and it won't include data such as passenger profiles and loyalty program information. It does include hundreds of millions of Microsoft Teams chats as well as over 100 million emails, as well as information "related to revenue, aircraft operations, employee productivity, and audits and fraud," a court explained. Bloomberg's report further mentions data on "marketing campaigns, human resources, strategy, and project management," pricing from over 7 billion competitor flights, around 7.5 billion passenger transaction records from nearly two decades of operations, and more than "30 million lines of code."

Spirit Airlines Is Dead, but Its Data Will Haunt Google's Servers for Generations to Come

Spirit Airlines has parked its budget flight business in the big airline hangar in the sky, but it will continue to live on in a Google data center. Google has emerged victorious in a bankruptcy auction to purchase a trove of data collected by the now-defunct airline and reportedly plans to use it to help train its AI models. Google's winning bid in the auction was priced at $10 million, outbidding Mercor, an AI training data giant. According to a notice published on the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York's docket, as the winning bidder, Google is now the proud owner of more than 100 million company emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, 30 million lines of code, development metadata, software models and algorithms, as well as revenue, aircraft operations and employee productivity data. Most of the information Google picked up comes from the company's internal operations. Details like Spirit Airlines' 97.5 million passenger profiles and more than 50 million records on Spirit loyalty program members were not included in the purchase. So if you used to fly Spirit, rest easy knowing the company didn't totally sell you out (at least, not in this particular batch). To be sure, Google reportedly said that it will ensure data is "rigorously scrubbed of any personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt," per Bloomberg. So what exactly does Google want with all this information? For AI, of course. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can help improve our products and AI models," Google told Bloomberg. Proprietary business data has become a big get for companies working on AI models. It's become a micro-market for failed startups to sell off their emails, Slack messages, and other communications to AI companies to squeeze a little more cash out of their dead businesses. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mercor -- the same company involved in the bidding war for Spirit's trove -- was offering people money for materials from their previous jobs, hoping to extract industry-specific knowledge to train its AI. AI models definitely need some help if they're ever going to step into an executive role. Anthropic experimented by putting Claude in charge of a vending machine, only for it to lose money hand over fist. Andon Labs has been running an experiment that puts different AI models in charge of a cafe, and so far they've all managed to lose money at a baffling rate. Whether stuffing a model with data from the now-bankrupt Spirit Airlines will help with that is anyone's guess, but hey, data is data.

Google's $10 million bid to buy old business data from Spirit Airlines so it can use it to train AI has hit turbulence

One corporation's old business data could be another's AI treasure * Google won a bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines' internal business data for $10 million * The package runs to roughly 100 million emails, 500 million Teams items, decades of payroll and crew records, and about 30 million lines of code, with customer and loyalty data excluded * However the sale has stalled as a flight attendants' union says the privacy terms protect customers rather than employees, and a rival bidder has since offered $12.5 million Google has successfully bid $10 million for what a court notice calls the 'Deidentified Data' of Spirit Airlines' parent company - but its bid to use the data to train AI models has run into a privacy debate. The cache is massive: it contains roughly 100 million emails and 80,000 email accounts, and lists 17,082,644 OneDrive items, 20,577,677 SharePoint items, and 500 million Teams items, along with the Microsoft 365 environment that they were stored in. It includes 1,092,000 time card records going back to December 2012, 175,658 employee records going back to August 1986, 3,426,618 payroll records, 148,018 employee tax forms, 5,014,676 crew pairings, applicant tracking documents, litigation case files, and employment contracts - and Bloomberg Law also notes it contains around 30 million lines of code, plus revenue, aircraft operations, and audit data. A deal with plenty of naysayers and competitors? Spirit Airlines was one of America's most prolific low-cost providers, and as a result, it has what one could term a treasure trove of documents that Google could leverage to train its AI models at a time when experts and subject-matter experts are increasingly in short supply on an internet that has sidelined many of them in favor of AI-generated answers. The move, if it closes, subject to a September 9 hearing, makes sense for Google on two fronts; the AI training aspect is the most obvious one. Google is also already a dominant surface for travel search, and it is buying one carrier's booking curves, fare behavior, and competitor pricing history out of a liquidation could give it a staggering amount of insight here on how to track, predict and parse data publically made available by other low-cost airlines thanks to a near-naked view of the internals of such a company. The data being handed over skips 97.5 million passenger profiles and 50.2 million Free Spirit loyalty records, in addition to privileged materials. This, however, is not enough to appease certain quarters: the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA filed a limited objection to the sale, asking the court to decline the transaction if it does not extend the same level of protections to flight attendant data as it does to consumer data. This would concern employment records by the now-defunct airline, and does pose a legitimate concern, but 'de-identifying' records could also potentially affect data integrity across the board for an organization where much of the data is valuable only because it can be tracked back and linked reliably by AI models. Google's public statement is that any data it receives will be rigorously scrubbed of personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt. Google bought the data from Spirit Aviation Holdings during a bankruptcy auction in New York after it opened at $5 million. Its nearest competitor was also an AI data firm, Mercor.io, which offered $7.5 million, resulting in it being assigned alternate-bidder status if Google's bid failed to close. What is a mind-boggling number for some is otherwise a rather cheap way for a major AI player to secure four decades of an airline's data, an amount that it would otherwise spend on a few senior engineers; for context, Google has already pledged $1 billion in education spending linked to AI. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

'Adding insult to injury': Flight attendants accuse Google of creepy deal to access 'confidential' data for AI in Spirit Airlines transaction | Fortune

"The privacy architecture of this transaction is consumer-facing; its payload is disproportionately employee-facing," the filing states. "Hence, the employee data is far more confidential than the customer data, yet receives far less protection than the customer data." Spirit Airlines has been one of America's best-known low-cost airlines, building business off of affordable flights and charging separately for services. But its collapse has led investors and stakeholders to sell off the company's remaining assets, which include physical and digital property. The dispute creates a wrinkle in Google's effort to turn the remains of the bankrupt airline into fuel for its AI ambitions. The tech giant won a bankruptcy auction for $10 million, beating AI recruiting company Mercor who offered $7.5 million. The transaction includes roughly 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages -- along with spreadsheets, calendars, software code and other internal business records. Google has disputed the data risk and told Fortune it is currently reviewing the objection filed by the union. The company posits there will be no personal identifying information that is of concern by the AFA-CWA included in the data obtained by Google. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," A Google spokesperson told Fortune. "We will not receive any personal information from this dataset." The company also said any data that is received through the sale will be de-identified by an unnamed third party before being obtained by the tech corporation. According to Google's sale filing, the data protections applied to the auction include consumer data -- but doesn't specifically state employee confidentiality. "Assets shall not include information that relates to, describes, or is reasonably capable of being associated with a consumer or is otherwise considered 'personal data', 'personal information', 'nonpublic personal information' or other similar term under applicable data protection laws," the filing read. Google says it has "no interest" in receiving employee or any individual personal identifying information. However, the Association of Flight Attendants says Google's safeguards aren't enough. In a note published this week, the union said the auction filing "does not address whether the contents of the record are confidential." The union also wrote that they have concerns that the Sale Agreement's "deidentification" might still preserve "referential integrity across the data set" -- meaning the transmission of the data could possibly allow the confidential records to be followed. The organization has also sent challenges to the failed airline itself, arguing the company did not adequately notify employees before shutting down. "Spirit Flight Attendants still haven't been paid their accrued vacation and sick leave, along with other compensation they are due," AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson told Fortune. "Attempting to now sell their data is adding insult to injury." But this doesn't mean the union is committed to shutting down the sale -- or the data transfer. According to its filing, AFA-CWA "does not seek to disrupt the Debtors' sale process, to unwind the Auction, or to prevent the estates from monetizing data assets." Instead, it only looks to remove all identifying information that can be traced back to individuals and employees related to the airline. "The flight attendants' interest is in confidentiality," the filing states.

Google buys Spirit Airlines data for $10 million to train AI

For $10 million, Google $GOOGL is purchasing internal business data from Spirit Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy, intending to use it to train AI models and enhance its products, the company said. Court filings cited by Axios put the volume of material at approximately 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft $MSFT Teams chats. It also includes spreadsheets, calendars, marketing materials, HR information, project management documents, financial databases, audits, and presentations. Google said the data arriving in its hands will be cleared of all personally identifiable information and customer records, with a third party handling that scrubbing before the handoff occurs. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "We will not receive any personal information from this dataset. Any data we receive will be rigorously scrubbed of any personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt." Google secured the data through a bankruptcy auction, and a federal judge's sign-off on the transaction is on the docket for Wednesday. Should the judge decline to approve the sale, AI hiring platform Mercor stands as the runner-up, having offered $7.5 million for the dataset, the company said. Spirit ceased operations earlier this year after a government rescue package collapsed. The airline had been in talks with the Trump administration on a deal worth up to $500 million, but a key group of creditors rejected the proposed terms. Spirit CEO Dave Davis cited rising fuel costs as the decisive factor in the shutdown, which left roughly 17,000 employees and contractors without work. Spirit had filed for bankruptcy a second time in August 2025, following losses of nearly $257 million after emerging from its first bankruptcy in March of that year. A spike in jet fuel prices tied to the conflict involving the U.S., Israel, and Iran pushed the airline's projected 2026 operating margin toward negative 20%. The wind-down marked the first disappearance of a major U.S. carrier since Midway Airlines folded in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Attorneys have continued handling the disposition of Spirit's remaining assets through the bankruptcy court process.

Google Is Paying $10 Million to Use Spirit Airlines Data to Train Its AI Models

AI data company Mercor bid $7.5 million for the data, with the sale awaiting approval from a bankruptcy judge. Google is paying $10 million for Spirit Airlines' business data, including internal communications and company records that it plans to use to improve its AI models. The deal includes emails, spreadsheets, bookings, frequent-flyer information, and employee human resources data, according to a report by CNN. The information will be stripped of details that could identify individuals before Google receives it. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," a Google spokesperson told CNN. The company said it will not receive personal information through the purchase. In a separate report, Reuters said that the data also includes Microsoft Teams messages and calendars, as well as marketing, productivity, and operations records. Spirit halted operations in May and has been selling its remaining assets through bankruptcy. Airline bankruptcies typically end with another carrier buying the company, including its data. Google faced competition for the data. AI data company Mercor reportedly submitted a $7.5 million bid. The sale still requires court approval. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane is scheduled to consider the deal at a hearing Wednesday. The sale comes as AI companies increasingly pay for access to data used to train and improve their models. In February 2024, Reddit gave Google access to nearly two decades of user-generated content in a deal reportedly worth $60 million a year. In May 2024, OpenAI reached its own agreement to bring Reddit content into ChatGPT. More recently, in January, the Wikimedia Foundation announced agreements with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and other AI companies for large-scale access to Wikipedia content.

If Google will pay $10 million for a lot of old emails and business records, what price your personal data in the AI era to come?

If you ever doubted data is the new oil, check out the $10 million that Google has put on the table to snap up every email that Spirit Airlines employees ever sent - and then consider the precedent that this deal is likely to set for future bankruptcies in the US and your privacy! For context, back in May, US budget airline Spirit Airlines hit the tarmac for the last time, filing for bankruptcy after months of speculation surrounding its fiscal viability. As is customary in such scenarios, the receivers handling the bankruptcy proceedings set about a corporate fire sale to try to pay down some of the firm's debts. What's different here in the AI age is that Big Tech turned up at the auction and bid for data. Not physical assets, not property, data - information held in the airline's systems that could be used by the company for frontier model training. And that's a lot of data - roughly 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, 17 million OneDrive files, and 20.6 million Sharepoint items. Then there's all the employee records dating back to the mid-1980s, 34 years of internal business records and correspondence, and 516 code repositories build by Spirit's internal IT teams. Data from passenger profiles or information captured from the Free Spirit loyalty program are explicitly excluded from this deal and Google has promised that any material it buys will be cleansed by an independent third party to remove any personal identifiers. But nonetheless, what Google gets for its $10 million is essentially an enterprise digital model of how an airline operates - albeit one that ultimately didn't operate well enough to survive, but still... - and the long-term value of that is almost certainly worth a lot more than the $10 million it's ready to pay. Specialist data In the AI age, specialized data to build new frontier models and train up AI systems is going to become every more valuable and ever more a competitive differentiator in an already over-crowded and febrile market. Oracle's Larry Ellison summed up the realities of the situation a few months ago when he said: All the Large Language Models -- OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, xAI -- they're all trained on the same data. It's all public data from the internet. So they're all basically the same. And that's why they're becoming commoditized so quickly...The future lies in leveraging private enterprise data. Now, critics will suggest that all too many AI model firms have approached the need for data to build out their model capabilities by copyright infringement and wholesale theft and there's plenty of evidence - and pending litigation - to support such a thesis. So on the one hand, perhaps it's important to note that Google, on the face of it, has gone about this in a more business-like manner, being ready to pay to buy in other people's knowledge. On the other hand, the knowledge that it's buying was provided by people over a period of some decades when they could not possibly have suspected that it would be used in since a manner. By 2036, if someone's trying to buy the previous five years worth of data from a firm then there's possibly a case to be made that everyone ought to be fully aware of what might happen to any data handed over to an organization, unless opt-outs are opted-into or there's some significant movement on the regulatory tectonic plates. But right now, this is data that was gathered before gen AI was a thing. Precedent-setting The players involved here are high-profile enough that this is getting a lot of attention in its own right. But the really important thing is not what happens in this individual case, but rather the precedent that it sets. This will not be the last time this sort of data fire sale occurs. The value of corporate data is not going to fall, any more than the voracious appetite from model firms for access to that data is going to decline notably either. So this or something like it will happen again - and probably with increasing frequency. Google had to fight off competition from a dedicated AI training firm to secure its deal, and while the matter rumbles though the courts, another bidder has emerged to try to gazzump the existing Google offer with a $12.5 bid for its own deal. The demand is clearly there. And while this Google deal explicitly excludes customer-specific data, that can't be guaranteed to be the case in future examples of such actions. Imagine in five years time, it happens to an organization you've worked for or engaged with. Your emails, your Slack messages, your chatter on the corporate intranet, all gobbled up to become so much AI training fodder. As it, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) has raised objections to the proposed purchase, with much of the data involving their members. The Association argues in a legal filing that the terms of the sale do not appears to have safeguarding provisions in place to protect confidential workplace data, such as payroll records and internal communications, in the same way that customer-specific information will be: The privacy architecture of this transaction is consumer-facing; its payload is disproportionately employee-facing. Hence, the employee data is far more confidential than the customer data, yet receives far less protection. The union wants the deal ruled out unless flight attendant data is removed from any data transfer. Another option would be the setting up of an independent review process applied to labour and disciplinary records before anything changes hands, along with clearer details on how material might or might not be passed onto third parties at a later date beyond the initial transfer. The sale has been put on hold by the bankruptcy court until 9 September to give time to rule on AFA's argument and plea. Consequences It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the US where, as diginomica has noted so many times over the years, legislative and political attitudes towards data privacy and protection are far laxer than, for example, in Europe. Could this sort of scenario occur if Spirit was a German airline? GDPR would surely create enormously high barriers to overcome before any such deal could take place - the data at the heart of the Spirit Airlines case was not provided or processed for the purpose of AI training, so there would certainly be a change of data use involved, for example. Even in the US, where Federal level data protection legislation seems as far off as ever it was, despite positive noises periodically, how the Google/Spirit case plays out may have regulatory/legal best practice ramifications. Enterprises may find it in their best interests to factor in stronger workforce-specific privacy terms and conditions in future contracts to avoid a similar challenge arising from future potential bankruptcy sales. My take You wrote an email. You didn't realize you were training an AI model. Or that you were creating a sellable asset. You do now. This is going to be a very important case to keep an eye on as the precedent that it sets is going to be returned to time and again in the coming years. Watch this space. We'll return to this after 9 September when the court reports back on its thinking. This one matters.

Why Spirit Airlines' internal data has become a hot commodity for AI companies

Google, Micro1, and Mercor have all bid millions for the carrier's internal data, as AI companies race to buy the records of how businesses actually work. Spirit Airlines hasn't flown since May, when the discount carrier announced an "orderly wind-down of operations" as part of bankruptcy proceedings. But the grounded airline might be set for a multimillion-dollar payout from a newly valuable asset: the sale of its corporate data, including internal wikis, emails, source code, and spreadsheets that can be used to train artificial intelligence. Google successfully bid $10 million for the data trove, according to court documents, though AI training provider Micro1 says it has since submitted a rival $12.5 million offer. It's unclear whether Micro1's offer, which came after the formal auction had concluded, will be considered. An attorney handling the data sale in the bankruptcy didn't immediately respond to an inquiry from Fast Company. Under the Google deal, any personally identifiable information would be processed for privacy by a third-party "deidentification agent," according to court records, and the dataset doesn't include Spirit's customer lists. Still, a Spirit flight attendant union has formally objected to the Google sale unless more steps are taken to protect employee privacy, arguing that workers can still be identified even after their names are removed from the files. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," a Google spokesperson writes in an email to Fast Company. "We will not receive any personal information from this dataset." The Spirit bidding war is part of a broader rush by companies building and refining AI systems to acquire datasets from both shuttered and still-operating businesses. They say the records can help train AI to handle office work in realistic business environments. "Companies are sitting on decades of records that show how real work gets done, and that data is now some of the most valuable material for training and evaluating AI," writes a spokesperson for AI training company Mercor, which itself had offered $7.5 million for the Spirit data, in an email to Fast Company. "We partner with leading companies to license their operational data to the labs building the next generation of models. Spirit was that same process applied to a bankruptcy estate." Such corporate data transactions come alongside controversial pushes to acquire everything from Reddit's forum archives to out-of-print books that could give AI models an edge, as well as hefty payouts to experts in fields from finance to poetry to help train and test AI. While AI companies say corporate records are invaluable for developing tools that can work in real-world business environments, privacy advocates caution that they could expose sensitive information about employees and customers even after steps are taken to anonymize the material.

Google's attempt to buy Spirit Airlines' data might come unstuck

Google's attempt to buy Spirit Airlines' data might come unstuck Google LLC's artificial intelligence researchers had been salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on a trove of business data acquired from the defunct airline Spirit Airlines Inc. in an auction, but the proposed deal is being challenged by two separate parties. On Wednesday, the bankruptcy court that initially approved Google's $10 million purchase of Spirit Airlines' data agreed to temporarily halt the transaction after former flight attendants objected to the deal, saying it could violate their privacy. Then today, an AI training data startup called Micro1 Inc. came forward with a last minute attempt to trump Google's bid with a higher offer. Google won the auction of Spirit's digital archives last week. The records include decades of payroll, travel and recruiting files, along with around 100 million emails, 80,000 email accounts and millions of additional digital items. When Google's winning bid was announced, it said it intends to use the information to improve its AI models, and promised that any personal customer data would be excluded from the purchase. The court made sure of that. As part of the deal, Google was forced to agree to use a court-appointed ombudsman to oversee a "de-identification" process that would ensure the dataset was stripped of any personally identifiable information pertaining to Spirit's customers, before it was given to Google. In addition, Google had to agree to never intentionally attempt to re-identify the data. However, Spirit's former flight attendants are worried, because the judge made no mention of protecting employee data. They're worried that Google may be getting its hands on tons of personal information about the airline's former workers, and a license to use it however it wishes. That's why the Association of Flight Attendants, which is a collective bargaining unit that represents Spirit's former workers, went to court, arguing that Google relied on consumer protection laws to guarantee it wouldn't expose any customer data. The problem is that these laws don't cover workers, who are also entitled to confidentiality. "The privacy architecture of this transaction is consumer-facing; its payload is disproportionately employee-facing," the AFA argued. "Hence, the employee data is far more confidential than the customer data, yet receives far less protection." Judge Sean Lane, who is overseeing Spirit's wider bankruptcy case, agreed to delay the sale until September 9 to give the court more time to evaluate the AFA's claims. It's this delay that has apparently prompted Micro1 Chief Executive Ali Ansari to try and outmaneuver Google at the last minute. Ansari told Business Insider that his company has just lodged a "materially higher" bid to acquire the data from under Google's nose. According to that report, Micro1 sent its $12.5 million offer directly to Spirit Airlines' legal team on Wednesday. Ansari justified the bid, saying that Spirit's data is extremely valuable, and that Google's bid was "actually quite low" considering that the airline had been in operation for decades. Micro1 is no stranger to buying data from failed businesses, Ansari said. It usually pays up to $2 million to acquire their datasets, but the difference is that most are startups that went out of business after only a few years of operation. Whether or not Micro1 will be successful in its bid isn't clear. Nancy Rapoport, a law professor at the University of Nevada, told Business Insider that the court is likely to reject the offer. "A duly noticed, well-run auction generally won't get undone," she said. "The higher bidder had the opportunity to bid during the auction." But Lindsey Simon, an associate law professor at Emory University, said there's a chance that Micro1 might get away with this, because such decisions are usually up to the judge's discretion. "The bankruptcy code isn't clear on this," he said.

Google Wants Spirit Airlines' Data. A Startup Just Outbid Its $10 Million Offer

Micro1, an artificial intelligence startup, has put in a $12.5 million bid for Spirit Airlines' data. The amount is higher than that of the current frontrunner, Google. Currently being auctioned off in New York's Southern District Court, the now-defunct airline's data is up for grabs. That includes: * 100 million company emails * 500 million Microsoft Teams messages * Detailed logs covering thousands of flights and aircraft operations * Pricing data on 7.2 billion competitor flights * 7.5 billion customer transaction records dating back to 2008 * Over 30 million lines of custom software code * Corporate records dating back to 1986 regarding financial databases, audits, fraud records, and marketing analytics "Realistic data is very valuable," Micro1 CEO and founder Ali Ansari told Business Insider, calling Google's bid of $10 million "actually quite low." According to the outlet, Micro1, which was recently named to the Inc. 5000, currently pays up to $2 million for its data. Though Google currently has the winning bid, judge approval for the auction is slated for September 9, allowing Micro1 to potentially sweep the deal. Subscribe to Inc. This Morning, Inc.'s free daily newsletter, to get the top stories of the day in your inbox. In a statement, a spokesperson for Micro1 told Inc. that if the bid is successful, the data would be used to help train AI models with privacy protections explicitly incorporated. "If our bid is approved, privacy and security will be a top priority. We take the concerns raised by Spirit employees and the AFA very seriously and would ensure that personal and employee information is appropriately protected and kept confidential." The company added that over the past two weeks, Micro1 has committed approximately $20 million to other real-world data transactions as it looks to build more capable AI models. Data goldmine Spirit, a Florida-based low-cost carrier, ceased services in early May due to ongoing financial troubles exacerbated by the war in Iran. Despite multiple attempts to clear its $8.1 billion worth of debt, the airline ultimately filed for bankruptcy. Since then, Spirit's assets have been auctioned off, including its headquarters and airport slots. Those have been bought by major companies, like JetBlue. Google is hoping to be added to the roster.

The unusual way Google is involved in the Spirit Airlines bankruptcy -- and what that means for you

Google is buying up all of Spirit's data for $10 million -- and using it to train AI models. Spirit Airlines's abrupt shutdown in May was unprecedented for the airline industry. Bankruptcy may be nothing new, but Spirit completely dissolving, rather than being absorbed by another airline, marked the first major U.S. airline to entirely halt operations in 25 years. Travelers mourned the only reliably cheap option in an increasingly costly airline industry. Influencers rallied in an attempt to buy Spirit and turn it into an airline "for the people." But Spirit ultimately couldn't be saved, and now, the company is being stripped for parts. That includes all the standard assets you'd imagine belong to an airline -- its planes, real estate, and flight slots, for example -- as well as its data. Spirit's internal communications, spreadsheets, calendars, transactions, frequent flyer info, and more were all up for auction, and on Monday, it was disclosed that Google was the highest bidder, offering $10 million for Spirit's entire dataset. What's all that miscellaneous data worth to another company, particularly outside of the airline industry? Google said it intends to use the data to train its artificial intelligence models. That means any interactions customers have had with Spirit, from purchasing tickets to sending customer service emails, will be going toward Google's AI development, though the data will reportedly be stripped of all identifying information before the sale is complete. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," a Google spokesperson told CNN, also confirming that the purchase won't contain any personal information about Spirit customers or employees. Google wasn't the only AI company interested in Spirit's data. The second highest bidder was AI data startup Mercor, which bid $7.5 million for the dataset. On Wednesday, U.S. bankruptcy judge Sean Lane will consider approving the data sale. Social media is speculating that Google's winning bid could set a new precedent in the AI industry, anticipating more data sales from bankrupt companies moving forward. "When you hear that data is the new oil, this is ultimately what that looks like," one user wrote about the sale.

Google pays $10M to get its hands on Spirit Airlines' business data for AI training

Google pays $10M to get its hands on Spirit Airlines' business data for AI training Alphabet Inc.'s Google LLC has won an auction to acquire massive volumes of internal business data from the bankrupt airline operator Spirit Airlines Inc. for a hefty $10 million price. A report by Bloomberg says that Google outbid a number of competitors to acquire the data, including the artificial intelligence training data company Mercor.io Corp. A notice published on the website of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York reveals that Google is now the proud owner of a massive haul of information that will basically tell it everything about how Spirit ran its business. The haul reportedly spans 100 million company emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, 30 million lines of code, software algorithms, development metadata and records pertaining to the airline's revenue, aircraft operations and employee productivity, Bloomberg reported. Much of the information that Google has acquired relates to the airline's internal operations, and it has not been given access to things like Spirit's 97.5 million passenger profiles or its 50 million loyalty program records. To reassure anyone who may have flown with Spirit, Google said it will make sure that all of the data it has acquired will be "rigorously scrubbed" of personally identifiable information by a third-party service provider, before it gets its hands on it. Google said that Spirit's data is a valuable asset that will help improve its AI products and models. In recent times, proprietary business data has become an in-demand resource for companies striving to develop more powerful AI models. In April, Gizmodo reported on the emergence of a nascent market for failed startups to sell off their emails, slack messages, operational data and so on to AI firms in order to squeeze whatever value remains out of their dead businesses. Mercor, which lost out to Google this time around, is one of the companies at the center of this new market. According to a Wall Street Journal report that same month, it has been going around offering professionals hard cash in return for materials from their former employers, hoping to extract industry-specific knowledge that can be used for AI training. AI companies are willing to pay big money for this kind of data because they need much more of it if they're ever going to achieve their dream of creating AI models that can outshine humans. The likes of Google, OpenAI Group PBC and Anthropic PBC have already helped themselves to most of the world's free information that's posted online, and some experts have warned that the world is rapidly running out of fresh data. It's a big concern, of course, because without fresh data, it's going to be much harder to improve on the AI systems we have now.

Google Is Buying Spirit Airlines Data For $10 Million. The Flight Attendants Object.

"Spirit takes all data privacy concerns seriously and will continue to work with the appropriate parties to resolve any outstanding issues," a spokesperson for the defunct airline said. Google won an auction on Friday to obtain data from the now-defunct Spirit Airlines for $10 million. "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," a Google spokesperson told HuffPost. "We will not receive any personal information from this dataset." According to court documents, the data does not include customer information, but it does include, in part, employee data and records, payroll records, employee tax forms, and roughly 100 million emails, 17 million OneDrive items, 20.6 million SharePoint items, and 500 million Teams items. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA has filed an objection to the sale, asking the court to stop it from going through. Alternatively, if the sale goes through, the union asks that flight attendants receive "at a minimum the same protections extended to consumers." "Spirit's disclosure indicates that these records will be 'deidentified,' which addresses whether a record can be traced to a named individual. However, it does not address whether the contents of the record are confidential," the group said in a press release. "With a group the size of the Spirit Flight Attendant population, our union has significant concerns that it may be possible that information about identifiable individuals or small identifiable groups can still be reconstructed and determined," AFA added. In a statement to HuffPost, a spokesperson for Spirit Airlines said a third party will "deidentify the data and certify that the data sold at auction is compliant with applicable privacy laws and regulations." "Spirit takes all data privacy concerns seriously and will continue to work with the appropriate parties to resolve any outstanding issues," the spokesperson continued. Spirit abruptly shut down in May after 34 years in business, providing budget travel, and immediately canceled all scheduled flights. It had 17,000 employees at the time of closure. The next court hearing is scheduled for Sept. 9.

AI training data: Google to buy Spirit Airlines business data for $10 million

The acquired data includes Spirit Airlines' employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, and calendars, as well ⁠as marketing, productivity, and operations data. Alphabet's Google is acquiring internal business data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million, saying it plans to use ⁠the data ⁠for product development and training its AI models. The acquired data includes Spirit Airlines' employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, and calendars, as well ⁠as marketing, productivity, and operations data. The data will ⁠be de-identified before the sale is complete, containing no customer information or personally identifiable information. A U.S. bankruptcy judge will consider approving the data sale at a Wednesday court hearing. Spirit also received a $7.5 million bid from Mercor, ⁠an AI data company. Spirit is selling off assets in bankruptcy after shutting down its business in May due to high debt and high fuel costs.

Google's $10 Million Spirit Airlines Data Deal Faces Roadblock as Union Raises Privacy Objections: 'We Wi

The U.S. bankruptcy court has delayed a hearing on Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google's proposed $10 million purchase of Spirit Aviation Holdings Inc.'s (OTC:FLYYQ) internal business data. Initially slated for Wednesday, the hearing has now been rescheduled for September 9. The court's decision was influenced by objections raised by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) against the sale of data from the bankrupt Spirit Airlines to Google. The AFA, representing Spirit's cabin crew, voiced concerns about the potential reconstruction of individual or small-group data, given the sale agreement's stipulation to maintain links across datasets. The union said the dataset could contain sensitive employee information, including employment and payroll records, emails and internal communications. The AFA criticized the proposal as "outrageous," warning that it could expose sensitive employee data, including payroll records, emails, SharePoint files and Microsoft Teams information. "We will fight this every way possible," the union said. Google and Spirit Airlines did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Google's Spirit Data Deal Awaits Approval Google had agreed to purchase internal business data from the bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million to enhance its product development and artificial intelligence model training. The deal involves the transfer of de-identified records, which Spirit insists do not contain any customer or personally identifiable information. Analyst Ratings JetBlue 'Worthless'? Analyst Cuts Rating As Us-Iran Conflict Keeps Jet Fuel Volatile JetBlue may increase its debt to fund losses, leading to its shares ultimately becoming "worthless," one analyst said. 2 min read Read this article A Google spokesperson had stated, "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can help improve our products and AI models." Latest Private Market Opportunities Join 400,000+ Investors Notably, the sale has been announced but is still awaiting approval, and the data has not yet been transferred to Google. The deal was announced after Spirit Airlines ceased operations in May following its creditors' rejection of a U.S. government rescue plan. The airline's collapse came after years of financial distress, with soaring jet-fuel costs during the Iran war adding to the pressure. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Trading Ideas Carl Icahn Trims JetBlue, AEP Stakes While Sitting Out New Stock Bets Carl Icahn made no new stock purchases in Q2, trimming stakes in JetBlue and American Electric Power. The rest of his portfolio is unchanged. 3 min read Read this article Photo courtesy: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

The company collapsed - then sold its employees' messages to Google for $10 Million

Bankrupt Spirit Airlines sold millions of employee messages and internal files to Google for $10M, providing real-world data for AI training. Spirit Airlines may no longer be taking to the skies, but the digital footprint created by its workforce over the years has emerged as a multimillion-dollar commodity. Google secured the winning bid to acquire the defunct carrier's enterprise database at a bankruptcy auction, placing a winning bid of $10 million - $2.5 million above the runner-up offer. Spirit grounded its fleet and entered bankruptcy proceedings last May following severe financial distress. The repository acquired by Google contains approximately 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, tens of millions of lines of code, along with operational logs, spreadsheets, and calendar entries generated throughout Spirit's history. According to Google, the corporate records will be used to refine its commercial products and train artificial intelligence models. The tech giant further stated that the dataset will undergo strict anonymization before the final transfer, emphasizing that no customer information or personally identifiable data will be involved. Why pay millions for corporate correspondence? Google's multi-million-dollar acquisition highlights a broader paradigm shift across the AI landscape. Developers are moving beyond publicly scraped web content, shifting their focus toward authentic internal records that reflect the real-world mechanics of modern enterprises. Internal communications, software code, and administrative documentation allow AI models to learn how employees collaborate, navigate operational decisions, solve complex problems, and execute daily tasks. Demand for these enterprise datasets continues to surge as tech firms seek realistic business environments to train autonomous workplace agents. The transaction remains subject to final bankruptcy court approval. A scheduled hearing was postponed to September 9 after the union representing Spirit's flight attendants lodged a formal objection to the transaction. For corporate workers, Spirit's precedent offers a sobering reality: Every message, document, and line of code authored on company systems remains a permanent corporate asset - long after the employees themselves have left. Even as the airline vanished from the tarmac, the millions of digital tracks left behind by its staff proved to be a valuable financial asset.

Dead Airline's Emails Just Became a $10 Million AI Prize | PYMNTS.com

Google wanted none of that. Instead, it paid $10 million at auction for something airlines rarely think of as a sellable asset at all: the internal digital record of how Spirit actually operated, including roughly 100 million employee emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, more than 17 million OneDrive files, more than 20 million SharePoint items and 516 code repositories holding about 30 million lines of custom software, according to an Aug. 14 notice filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The package also includes more than 175,000 employee records dating back to 1986, along with data on aircraft operations, revenue management and productivity. Google started the bidding at $5 million and doubled it to win, beating a $7.5 million offer from Mercor, an AI hiring and training-data company that has been named backup buyer if Google's purchase falls through, according to the same court filing. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane is scheduled to review the sale at a hearing on Wednesday (Aug. 19). Google confirmed the purchase, telling Axios it "acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models." The sale explicitly excludes Spirit's 97.5 million passenger profiles, roughly 52.4 million loyalty program records and 740,000 co-branded cardholders, according to Skift. A third party will remove personally identifiable information before Google receives the data, using deidentification standards set under the California Consumer Privacy Act, with Google covering the cost of that process and agreeing not to attempt to re-identify anyone in the sanitized material. A Company's Internal Records Just Became a Priced, Contested Asset What makes the Spirit sale notable is not the dollar figure but the category of thing being sold. Corporate email archives, internal chat logs, IT tickets and legacy software code have historically had almost no resale value once a company failed. They were considered a liability to store and dispose of, not an asset a buyer would compete for. The fact that Google and Mercor bid against each other for exactly this kind of material at all is itself new. Artificial intelligence companies call this category proprietary or "real-world" data: records of how an actual business ran day to day, not just the public content available on the open internet. That shift reflects a specific limitation AI developers are running into. Large language models have already been trained on most of the easily accessible public internet. Continuing to improve their ability to handle complex, realistic business tasks depends on data that captures how organizations actually communicate, troubleshoot problems and make decisions internally, something a public website or a scraped forum post cannot show. Spirit's operational archive, built up over decades of running an actual airline, contains exactly that kind of texture: real emails between real employees solving real scheduling conflicts and maintenance issues, at a scale and level of authenticity that is difficult to manufacture synthetically. Bankruptcy Estates Just Found a New Asset to Sell If Spirit's sale closes, it establishes a rough price benchmark other bankruptcy trustees and creditors' committees are likely to notice. Companies liquidating in bankruptcy typically auction off physical assets, real estate, equipment, patents and customer lists because those categories have well-understood resale markets. A company's internal operational archive, absent an AI buyer specifically interested in it, would typically be treated as a compliance and storage cost to be minimized, not a revenue source. Spirit's case suggests that calculation may be changing for any company with a substantial digital paper trail and a genuine operational history, not just failed airlines. Judge Lane's ruling Wednesday will determine whether that pricing precedent actually takes hold. For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

Google to Buy Bankrupt Spirit Airlines' Data for $10 Million - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Google is Paying $10 Million for Bankrupt Spirit Airlines' Old Emails and Spreadsheets: Here's Why Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google has reportedly agreed to buy internal business data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million to use for product development and artificial intelligence model training. The Terms of the Sale "We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models," a Google spokesperson said. The company will not receive any personal information from the dataset, as a third party will scrub it before handing it over. The acquired data includes Spirit's employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets and calendars, as well as marketing, productivity and operations data, according to a Reuters News report. A U.S. bankruptcy judge is set to consider approving the sale at a hearing Wednesday. Spirit also received a competing $7.5 million bid from AI data company Mercor. Tech Anthony Scaramucci Says He Was 'Rolled in Broken Glass' and Put Through a 'Sausage Grinder' After Being Fired by Trump: His One Rule for Bouncing Back Anthony Scaramucci reflected on his 11-day White House stint and other setbacks, urging people to ignore the haters. 3 min read Read this article Spirit Airlines' Collapse Spirit shut down operations in May after high jet fuel costs, driven partly by the Iran war, derailed a planned bankruptcy restructuring, and a proposed federal rescue plan fell through. The airline has since sold off other assets, including its takeoff and landing slots at New York's LaGuardia Airport, which JetBlue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ:JBLU) won at auction last month for $58.5 million, beating out Frontier Group Holdings Inc.'s (NASDAQ:ULCC) Frontier Airlines' $57.5 million bid. A Second Bankruptcy That Ended In Liquidation Spirit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025, a year after an earlier bankruptcy filing failed to turn around the airline's finances. The carrier tried to restructure by downsizing and focusing on stronger routes, but setbacks piled up, including a Pratt & Whitney engine recall that sidelined dozens of Airbus SE (OTC:EADSY) jets and a blocked JetBlue acquisition on antitrust grounds. Price Action: Alphabet's Class A stock closed 0.55% lower on Monday at $344 and fell 0.03% in extended trading, while its Class C stock closed 0.61% lower at $341.45 and fell 0.02% in after-hours. Benzinga edge rankings indicate Alphabet's Class A stock has a Momentum score in the 78th percentile and a Growth score in the 86th percentile. Markets Nike, Meta Platforms, INVO Fertility, EyePoint Pharmaceuticals, and Micron: Why These 5 Stocks Are on Investors' Radars Today Major U.S. indices ended lower on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 0.51% to 53,459.78 3 min read Read this article Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo Courtesy: ZikG on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Why is Google buying Spirit Airlines business data for $10 million By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Alphabet (GOOGL) is acquiring internal business data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million in a deal that highlights the growing demand for real-world enterprise data to train artificial intelligence models. What's actually being bought Alphabet (GOOGL) is acquiring internal business data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million. Critically, this is not customer data -- the package includes employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars, and marketing/operations/productivity data, all de-identified before the sale. No personally identifiable information (PII) is included. Why Google wants airline operational data AI models -- especially large language models and productivity/workplace tools -- need diverse, real-world data to learn from. Airline operations are a source of considerable complexity: * Emails & Teams messages: Real workplace communication patterns at scale -- valuable for training tools like Google Workspace AI (Gemini in Gmail, Docs, etc.) * Spreadsheets & calendars: Complex scheduling, logistics, and planning data that helps AI understand real business workflows * Marketing & operations data: Pricing strategies, campaign structures, and operational decision-making chains This type of authentic enterprise data is hard to generate synthetically and is exactly what makes AI assistants sound and behave like real professionals. The bankruptcy angle Spirit shut down in May 2026 after collapsing under high debt and fuel costs -- making this a classic distressed asset sale. The bankruptcy court is set to consider approving the deal at a hearing on Wednesday, Aug. 19. Notably, AI data company Mercor also submitted a competing bid of $7.5 million, confirming there is a real market for this type of corporate data. Why $10M is modest -- but still significant For Alphabet (GOOGL), $10M is a small figure on a balance sheet measured in hundreds of billions. But the signal is what matters: * Data sourcing at scale: Tech giants are actively seeking non-traditional sources for training data as the "easy" internet data well runs dry * Regulatory precedent: Buying de-identified corporate data sidesteps many privacy concerns that accompany consumer data purchases * A new asset class emerging: Bankrupt companies' operational data is becoming a legitimate commodity -- more deals of this kind may follow The bigger picture This deal is a small but telling window into the AI data demand driving Big Tech. As high-quality training data becomes scarcer and more contested -- amid copyright lawsuits and scraping restrictions -- unconventional sources like bankruptcy estates become attractive. Spirit's misfortune is becoming part of Google's AI development pipeline. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Google wins Spirit Airlines data auction for AI training By Investing.com

Investing.com - Google won a bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines' business data, agreeing to pay $10 million for emails, calendar information, chats, documents and spreadsheets, according to a bankruptcy court filing. The auction took place Friday for the deidentified data assets. Mercor.io Corporation submitted an alternate bid of $7.5 million for the same data. A hearing to approve the sale to Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is scheduled for August 19, 2026 before Judge Sean H. Lane in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Spirit Airlines ceased operations earlier in 2026 after failing to emerge from its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The airline filed for bankruptcy on August 29, 2025 in the Southern District of New York. Attorneys continue to handle the disposition of the carrier's remaining assets. The sale agreement requires all data to be deidentified before transfer to Google. The deidentification process removes or transforms data elements so information cannot be associated with or linked to individual consumers. Google commits to maintain the data in deidentified form and will not intentionally associate it with any person or household. Spirit Airlines retains the right to keep copies of the data solely for winding down its business or complying with legal requirements. The carrier may sell its customer data list, which includes individual traveler spending aggregated by year, to third parties in hospitality or travel industries. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.