# Google pays $10M to get its hands on Spirit Airlines’ business data for AI training > Source: > Published: 2026-08-17 23:40:53+00:00 ### 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](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/google-aims-to-boost-ai-with-purchase-of-spirit-airlines-data) says that Google outbid a number of competitors to acquire the data, including the artificial intelligence training data company [Mercor.io Corp](https://siliconangle.com/2025/09/10/report-investors-offered-fund-ai-data-startup-mercor-10b-valuation/). A notice [published](https://document.epiq11.com/document/getdocumentbycode?docId=4606206&projectCode=SPJ&source=DM) 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](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916) 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](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-training-data-mercor-offers-ed37d2a1) 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](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2026/04/14/ai-may-be-running-out-of-data-stanford-report-warns/) 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. ##### Photo: Wikipedia # A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. **Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network**, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities. **15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos**, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more** 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni**— Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network ### Are you an AWS customer? 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