Are AI companies really paying businesses for their data?

Yes, though public evidence comes mostly from closing companies: Forbes reported one wind-down firm handled nearly 100 deals in a year, typically $10,000 to $100,000, and Google bid $10 million for Spirit Airlines’ records. Sellers still in business go unnamed. The Spirit sale still needed court approval in late September 2026.

Which sales of company records have been reported?

The reported sales are by companies that had shut down or gone bankrupt, at prices from tens of thousands of dollars to $10 million. None of the figures below is a price paid to a business that kept operating.

Seller	What was sold	Reported price	Buyer	Reported by
Spirit Airlines, in bankruptcy	About 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats and collaboration records, plus revenue, aircraft-operations and audit records; passenger profiles and loyalty data excluded	$10 million winning bid; Mercor’s $7.5 million was the backup bid, and micro1 later offered $12.5 million	Google, subject to court approval	Bloomberg Law, August 2026; Fortune, September 2026
cielo24, a defunct transcription company	Its internal digital records	“Hundreds of thousands of dollars,” in its former CEO’s words	Not disclosed	Forbes, April 2026
Startups closing through SimpleClosure	Slack, email and other workspace data	Typically $10,000 to $100,000 each, across nearly 100 deals in a year, by SimpleClosure’s account	Not disclosed	Forbes, April 2026

Forbes also reported that Sunset, a rival wind-down firm, buys at similar prices that depend on a company’s size, age and “data richness.” The Spirit sale had not closed. Hearings were postponed several times (The Next Web), and as of late September 2026 it still needed the bankruptcy court’s approval (Moneywise). On September 17, 2026, Bloomberg Law reported that SpaceX’s AI unit had also informally discussed buying data from troubled or defunct startups; no deal was reported.

How big are the deals AI companies make for data?

The largest reported payments are for published content from platforms and publishers, not for companies’ internal records. Reuters reported in February 2024, citing sources, that Reddit’s licensing deal with Google was worth about $60 million a year. The Wall Street Journal, which News Corp owns, reported in May 2024, citing people familiar with the deal, that News Corp’s deal with OpenAI could be worth more than $250 million over five years.

Google also pays smaller holders directly. 404 Media reported on June 2, 2026 that Google was emailing Play Store developers with offers to pay for their app code, and VentureBeat reported on September 30 that Google was expanding the pilot, which pays developers and small businesses in roughly 100 countries. Neither report disclosed what Google pays.

These deals show what AI companies spend on licensed material. They are not prices for a company’s email or job files; How much is my company’s data worth? deals with that. Epoch AI researchers projected in 2024 that, if trends continue, language models will fully utilize the stock of human-generated public text between 2026 and 2032. Why would AI companies want our emails? covers what non-public business records add.

Has anyone like me actually done this and gotten paid?

Providers say so, but as of October 2026 Data Licensing Report has found no operating company that has said publicly, by name, that it licensed its records and was paid. That is partly by design. Handshake AI says partner companies are never identified, and License My Data says the owner’s company is never named to the buyer.

What exists is evidence the providers publish about themselves:

What was published	Published by	Left out
Four case studies: a roofing company ($450,000), a general contractor ($300,000), a solar company ($275,000) and a marketing agency ($110,000), each a perpetual exclusive license	Polyshares	Names, dates and buyers
Three past deals “paid to the business”: an engineering firm ($450,000), a freight broker ($650,000) and an accounting firm ($350,000)	Telegraph Lab, affiliated with Data Licensing Report	Names, dates and buyers
Four anonymous payouts from $850,000 to $2 million	Corpus	Names, dates and buyers
More than 50 data transactions in 45 days	micro1, in a court filing reported by Fortune in September 2026	Sellers, prices, buyers, and whether the sellers were still operating

Data Licensing Report has found no third-party confirmation of any of them, so they are claims rather than proof; that does not make them untrue. Telegraph Lab has described one transaction to Data Licensing Report: the owner of an online retailer was paid $300,000 within two weeks of the first conversation, after two of the three buyers approached made offers. That is a single deal, not a typical result, and Telegraph Lab is commercially affiliated with Data Licensing Report.

If a provider shows you case studies, ask whether one of those sellers will take a call from you. None of the cases above comes with the seller’s own account.

Which companies are buying business data?

Mostly AI data companies that sit between businesses and the AI labs, and several are large, funded firms rather than new websites:

• Appen has been listed on the Australian Securities Exchange since 2015 (Wikipedia) and reported first-half revenue of US$119.9 million in August 2026 (ASX announcement), though the results do not mention its enterprise-data program.
• Scale AI said in June 2025 that Meta had invested at a valuation above $29 billion; it runs a data partnership program for business records.
• Mercor was valued at $10 billion in October 2025 (TechCrunch) and says it pays by wire on delivery of the dataset.
• micro1 raised more than $100 million at a $4 billion valuation, Forbes reported in September 2026.
• Handshake AI belongs to Handshake, founded in 2014 and valued at $3.5 billion in its 2022 funding round (Wikipedia).
• Google buys directly through its pilot program.

Funding shows a buyer can pay. It says nothing about what any one of them will pay you. Other programs are new and small, and Is it a scam? sets out what each profiled provider publishes about who runs it. All 25 that Data Licensing Report lists are in the buyers directory, 22 of them working with companies that are still operating.

How much have these programs paid out in total?

Few publish a total, and each total is the provider’s own, unaudited figure.

• Troveo says it has paid more than $20 million to content owners, and more than 7,000 rights holders in an August 2026 guide; its content-owner page shows “$50M+ paid to creators globally”. Its site does not reconcile the two totals. Troveo began with creators’ video, and it announced the $20 million in the same April 2026 release that added company workflow data, so the totals say little about payments for business records.
• SimpleClosure recovered over $1 million for founders across its nearly 100 data deals in the year to April 2026, Forbes reported. In September 2026 it said more than 350 companies had taken part in AssetHub and that it was on track to return more than $10 million to startups.

None of these totals separates payments to operating businesses for their internal records.

Is everyone else already doing it?

No public count exists, and the numbers providers have shared run to dozens or hundreds of companies, many of them startups that were closing:

• micro1 said in a court filing, Fortune reported in September 2026, that it had completed more than 50 data transactions in the preceding 45 days.
• SimpleClosure says more than 350 companies have taken part in AssetHub, which served closing startups until September 2026.
• Troveo’s homepage shows “350+ Company Datasets”.
• Google told VentureBeat that “hundreds” of developers and small businesses had taken part in its pilot.
• Handshake AI’s company-data sales team is “a zero-to-one build” hiring its first five to ten reps.

Nothing published shows what share of operating companies in any industry has licensed its records. Many of the programs that buy from them appeared in 2026; the dates are on Can I sell my company’s data to AI companies?, and the market facts page keeps the dated record. The guide explains how the process works for a company that is still operating.