This page is about a market more than a record. It asks who already sells the records of failed companies for training AI, under whose authority, and at what prices.
The record
After a company fails, all that it wrote comes under the control of an officer supervised by a court: a trustee in the United States, an administrator or liquidator in Britain, Ireland, Germany and Australia. The officer's task is to raise money for creditors from whatever the company had. What is bought and sold here is the estate of documents: email going back years, contracts, invoices, ledgers, staff files and code, and, where the industry is regulated, what was filed with the regulator.
The trade has two shapes, so there are two worked examples, both real.
*Large and run through a court.* Spirit Airlines' estate auctioned its records, described as de-identified, on 14 August 2026 1. Google bid US$10 million and Mercor was named as the alternate at US$7.5 million 1. micro1 later filed notice of a bid of US$12.5 million 2. Six objections and supporting filings followed 1. The hearing has been moved to 6 November 2026, according to one press report 3. No bid has been approved and no money has changed hands.
*Small and one bid at a time.* 1Day Sooner, an American non-profit, bids at the bankruptcies of biotechnology companies for the complete file that a drug company submits to regulators 4. By a press account it holds three such sets, two of them donated; two bids in 2026 were not accepted; and it estimates a non-exclusive copy at "a few tens of thousands of dollars" 5. A foundation gave it US$500,000 in September 2026 to prove the approach 5.
Why it might matter for training AI
Data vendors' pages show labs asking for the records of ordinary companies and for tests an AI system cannot have seen. A failed company's records were never on the open web, and there is no live business to protect.
The General Data Company, an intermediary, lists the forms it sells: document archives, structured extracts, practice tasks, and held-out evaluation sets, and says estate data never appeared online 6. Raw estate records have been sold, in small deals. For estate records sold as a private test, no sale was found anywhere.
Who holds it and who may share it
The estate owns the records. The intermediary acts as its agent. The firm that strips personal data works for one side or the other.
In the United States a sale of this kind goes before the bankruptcy court. The statute was not opened here. In the Spirit case the flight attendants' union argues that the privacy review was built for customers and that the sale would convey "substantially the entire employment and workplace record" of staff 7.
For Germany and the European Union, The General Data Company says: "The insolvency administrator controls the estate's assets, including its data. Licensing proceeds only under a written mandate from the administrator" 6. Its pages cite no statute and name no administrator.
Suppliers may claim part of the estate. A software supplier objected in the Spirit case that records generated by its service were its own 1.
The Australian position is on this site's page about closing companies in Australia.
Who is already there
- The General Data Company offers the "document estates of wound-down European companies" 6. It publishes no prices, buyers, estates or volumes. Its seller document puts first samples two to four weeks after an agreement 8.
- SimpleClosure closes down American startups and sells their code and workspace records. It says more than 350 companies have listed, and in September 2026 it opened to operating companies as well 9.
- Petrarch, a young American company, says: "We source data including codebases, project files, and payments from bankruptcy courts, then de-identify and prepare the data for model training" 10. It names no case.
- Tonic.ai strips personal data as a service, under the line "Turn a wind-down workspace into a licensable asset" 11.
Only the courts make an estate's price public. Each of the intermediaries has added a second source of supply, from live companies.
No Australian operator was found.
What would have to be stripped
Customers' details first. In the Spirit case, press reports say the passenger booking databases were removed and Tonic.ai was engaged to strip the email 12.
Staff records are the open question. micro1's bid offered to leave out the employee material the unions named, to keep the data in the United States, and never to transfer it to "any Chinese entity" 2.
Stripping also collides with the sale contract. As filings describe it, the Spirit agreement promises that no part of the assets "has been deleted, modified, or removed" 2. An estate cannot easily promise completeness and remove what objectors want removed.
What stands in the way
- The Spirit ruling. A refusal, or an approval loaded with conditions, becomes the template other estates' lawyers read.
- The closest comparable names no buyer and no price.
- The cost of checking rights and stripping personal data is large against the price of a small estate.
- A non-profit that intends to publish what it buys removes exclusivity, which is much of the price.