For owners selling, closing, or already closed
AI developers license de-identified records from real companies, including companies that have closed. Whether yours can be licensed depends on who holds the records after a sale or a closing, whether the systems or exports survive, and what buyers ask for.
Where you are
Who can approve a license, and what is left to license, depend on which of these you are in. Your counsel decides what applies. This page describes a process. It is not legal advice.
01 / Selling
The purchase agreement usually decides who gets the books and records. Check it before offering them to anyone: your counsel reads it first, and we work from what it allows.
A sale can still leave the seller holding records the buyer did not take, such as older years, a retired product line or a division that was closed rather than sold.
02 / Winding down
In a wind-down you run, the company keeps its records. The board or owners authorize a license through an authorized officer, and a lender with a lien on the company's assets may need to consent. Your counsel confirms who can approve it.
The best time to decide is while the systems still run.
03 / Already closed
Backups and exports still count. Records can still be licensed after a company closes, where someone with authority can approve it and the systems or exports survive.
Tell us what you have and where it sits: a vendor's cloud, a backup drive or storage.
What has been reported
Reported, not FirmLedge results. None of these is an offer for your company's records, and a number for your company comes only from an inventory and a buyer's written response.
Larger court-supervised sales, and earlier sales of customer data, are on the market record.
Timing
When a company closes, the accounting and job systems are about to be shut off, software subscriptions lapse, and the people who know where everything is move on. If a shutoff or a subscription lapse is coming, tell us the date. An export taken before it keeps the option open.
Vendors delete on their own schedules. For most Microsoft 365 business subscriptions, data is deleted after 30 days expired and 90 days with admin-only access [3].
What a buyer takes
Originals stay with you. What a buyer receives is a de-identified copy under a written license for agreed uses, not the records themselves. Some buyers ask to buy the data outright instead, which changes what you keep, for how long, and what the buyer may do with the data and with anything trained on it.
Two buyers can quote the same number for different things. What the license says sets out the terms that differ from buyer to buyer, and what to ask about each.
Exclusions
These are excluded from the first offer. You and your counsel can add to the list.
Customer, borrower and patient information requires specific rights and privacy review; owner approval alone is not enough.
Removing names does not guarantee anonymity. Distinctive figures can still identify a business or person.
What FirmLedge does
FirmLedge works out what survives and who can approve a license, describes the records to several buyers without naming the company, and brings back every proposal we receive in the same format: price, package, permitted uses, exclusivity, de-identification method and the buyer's fee to FirmLedge. You decide whether to proceed.
The first step is the one-page assessment, prepared from your description with no files first. It is prepared at no charge, and it is not a valuation and not an offer. The full picture for owners is on the owners page.
Questions owners ask
Sources
Sources checked October 30, 2026. Figures are as reported by the publisher named; none is a FirmLedge figure.
No files first
Describe the systems, years and approximate counts. Andrew replies within two business days.