The market

What has been paid for company records.

AI developers now pay for the working records of real companies, and many of the reported sales involve companies that have closed. This page sets out what public reports say has been paid, what a written buyer request describes, and why a number for any one company comes only from a buyer's written response.

Public reports, checked October 21, 2026. Nothing on this page is a FirmLedge figure or an offer for any company's records.

What is being licensed

Records of real work, with the names taken out.

The records are a company's de-identified operating and financial history: ledgers, invoices, work orders, production and quality logs, CRM and system exports, and the email and documents around them. AI developers use them to build and test software. micro1, for example, says it uses de-identified company data to build reinforcement learning environments that reflect real business operations.

Closed companies are sought because the archive is complete and there is no longer an operating business to protect. Their records are also often about to disappear, as systems are shut off, subscriptions lapse and old files are destroyed.

Public reference points

What has been reported.

Each figure is as reported by the publisher named, on the date shown, and was checked October 21, 2026. None is a FirmLedge figure, and none is an offer for any company's records.

Forbes · April 16, 2026

Closed companies' records have sold for five and six figures.

Forbes reported that SimpleClosure, which helps companies wind down, had handled nearly 100 deals for closed companies in the past year, typically paying $10,000 to $100,000 per company, and that a competitor, Sunset, buys closed companies' data at similar prices.

cielo24's 13-year digital footprint, including its Slack messages and Jira tickets, brought "hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Anna Tong, "AI's New Training Data: Your Old Work Slacks And Emails," Forbes

Spirit Airlines · August 2026

A bankruptcy estate auctioned de-identified company data.

Spirit Airlines' estate auctioned de-identified company data, including corporate email, on August 14, 2026. Google was the successful bidder at $10.0 million, with Mercor as alternate bidder at $7.5 million.

The consumer privacy ombudsman's October 5 report concluded that approval would be appropriate from a privacy perspective. Objections, concentrated on employee data, are pending. The sale is not approved; the hearing is set for November 6, 2026, and it has been adjourned before.

Stretto case update, October 14, 2026; Skift, October 12, 2026

micro1 · October 9, 2026

A buyer announced a $1 billion, 12-month commitment.

micro1 announced a commitment to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing enterprise operational data, through its Company Data Partnerships program.

micro1 announcement, October 9, 2026

Reported developments

What has been reported since April.

April 16, 2026. Forbes reported that SimpleClosure, which helps companies wind down, had handled nearly 100 deals for closed companies in the past year, typically paying $10,000 to $100,000 per company, and that Sunset buys closed companies' data at similar prices. (Forbes, April 16, 2026)
August 14, 2026. Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy estate auctioned de-identified company data; Google was the successful bidder at $10.0 million, with Mercor.io as alternate bidder at $7.5 million. (Stretto research post, October 14, 2026)
August 27, 2026. Skift reported that the Association of Flight Attendants had objected to the Spirit sale, arguing that de-identified data could still be traced back to individuals. (Skift, August 27, 2026)
October 5, 2026. The consumer privacy ombudsman's supplemental report in the Spirit case concluded that approval of the sale would be appropriate from a privacy perspective. (Stretto research post, October 14, 2026)
October 8, 2026. More than 120 members of Congress wrote to Google and Spirit asking for employee-data safeguards before the sale proceeds. (Reuters via The Star, October 9, 2026; TravelPulse, October 10, 2026)
October 9, 2026. micro1 announced a commitment to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing enterprise operational data. (micro1, October 9, 2026)
October 9, 2026. The Spirit sale hearing, previously set for October 14, was adjourned to November 6, 2026. (Stretto research post, October 14, 2026)

Checked October 22, 2026. Each item is as reported by the publisher named; none is a FirmLedge figure or an offer for any company's records.

What written requests describe

From public reports to written requests.

Public reports put a small company's records at $10,000 to $100,000 (Forbes, April 16, 2026). A written buyer request we hold describes seven-figure budgets for complete, connected, multi-system archives of larger companies.

Every figure is conditional on the inventory; a number for a given company comes only from a buyer's written response.

Not a valuation. FirmLedge does not estimate what a particular company's records are worth before buyers respond in writing.

Where a given company sitsQualitative

prices highest: Complete, connected archives: multi-year records that follow the work from order to production to invoice to payment, in an uncommon industry, with the email and reporting around them.
prices far lower: Thin, generic or partial sets.
what moves price: In the same Forbes report, Sunset's chief executive, Brendan Mahony, said price depends on a company's size, its age and its "data richness," which he described as how traceable its internal data is and how well it links across platforms.
a number: Comes only from an inventory and a buyer's written response.

Where would your company sit?

Start with the one-page assessment.

It answers that question in words, not a number, from public records or your description. It is prepared at no charge, and it is not a valuation or an offer.

See the assessment

Estate or receivership Fit check Closing, closed or sold company Owner inquiry Data buyer For data buyers