Turing Project Lazarus review: what it buys from startups and what to ask

Project Lazarus is Turing’s program for acquiring the code and working records of startups that have shut down: its December 2025 announcement described acquiring “full private repositories, design docs, testing logs, infrastructure manifests, and internal wikis from defunct startups” in fintech, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and SaaS, to train frontier AI models. That announcement gave no prices or payment terms. Turing, the company behind it, supplies training data to AI labs.

Is Project Lazarus for companies that are still operating?

Its launch was aimed at startups that no longer operate. The announcement describes the goal as preserving “the complete operational history of defunct companies,” and The Information covered the program under the headline “Why Turing Is Buying Up Failed Startups’ Codebases”. Other Turing wording is broader. The program site describes its offer as “Monetize your startup’s codebase and operational data,” and CEO Jonathan Siddharth wrote on X in March 2026 that Turing had “pioneered acquiring real-world startup/enterprise codebases and operational data.”

So a startup that is closing or has closed fits the program as Turing first described it. An operating company should ask whether it qualifies before preparing anything. The buyers directory shows which providers say they work with operating companies, and the market page tracks data sales by closing companies.

What does Turing acquire, and is it a sale or a license?

Mostly engineering material: repositories, design documents, testing logs, infrastructure manifests and internal wikis, per the announcement. Turing’s launch post on X said models need “the raw record of how teams actually build,” listing design arguments, failed experiments and internal notes. Both lists center on the code and the reasoning around it, rather than sales email or customer records.

Turing’s wording is about acquiring: the program site says Turing “acquires real-world software assets.” Neither the announcement nor that description says whether a seller transfers ownership of the code or grants a license. The difference decides whether the startup keeps any rights to that code. Am I selling my data or licensing it? explains what each word means in the documents. Whether investors, lenders or a court must approve the transfer is a question for the company’s lawyer.

What does Project Lazarus pay?

Turing’s December 2025 announcement does not say. The one figure from Turing itself is secondhand: Fortune reported in September 2026 that CEO Jonathan Siddharth told The Information that Turing had bought five to ten failed-startup codebases, “paying an average in the tens of thousands of dollars for each.” The more detailed figures in circulation come from a competitor. HUD, which runs the DataVendor marketplace for codebases, wrote in a June 2026 comparison that “Current public pricing shows $10K–$100K for legacy code and up to $15K per modern repository,” that larger operational data bundles “may be priced separately based on scope,” and that Lazarus offers a $1,000 referral reward when a referred seller closes. HUD links no source for these figures.

Ask Turing to confirm its current prices in writing, and whether it prices per repository, per company, or by the records attached to the code. For comparison, How much is my company’s data worth? lists what other providers publish.

Who runs Project Lazarus?

Turing says its Turing Research group launched the program in December 2025. Turing says it was founded in 2018 and that it works with frontier AI labs on training data, evaluations and reinforcement learning environments; its company page cites “9/9 frontier labs.” Fortune reported that Turing raised a $111 million Series E in March 2025 at a $2.2 billion valuation. Its announcement names no head of the program.

Other businesses use the Turing name. The program’s own site is lazarus.turing.com, part of turing.com, run by Turing Enterprises, Inc.

What should a founder ask Turing before signing?

Ask first whether the deal is a purchase of your code and records or a license, and what rights, if any, you keep. The next questions concern scope: which records Turing takes besides the code, such as Slack, Jira, email or shared drives, and who removes personal details of former employees and customers, before or after transfer. Then confirm how the price is set and when it is paid, whether Turing accepts companies that are still operating, and whether the material will be used only for Turing’s own lab work or licensed on to others.