{"id":143019,"date":"2026-08-18T00:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T00:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/143019\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T00:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T00:12:09","slug":"google-pays-10m-to-get-its-hands-on-spirit-airlines-business-data-for-ai-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/143019\/","title":{"rendered":"Google pays $10M to get its hands on Spirit Airlines&#8217; business data for AI training"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google LLC has won an auction to acquire massive volumes of internal business data from the bankrupt airline operator Spirit Airlines Inc. for a hefty $10 million price.<\/p>\n<p>A report by <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bloomberglaw.com\/business-and-practice\/google-aims-to-boost-ai-with-purchase-of-spirit-airlines-data\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomberg<\/a> says that Google outbid a number of competitors to acquire the data, including the artificial intelligence training data company <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconangle.com\/2025\/09\/10\/report-investors-offered-fund-ai-data-startup-mercor-10b-valuation\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mercor.io Corp<\/a>. A notice <a href=\"https:\/\/document.epiq11.com\/document\/getdocumentbycode?docId=4606206&amp;projectCode=SPJ&amp;source=DM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> on the website of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York reveals that Google is now the proud owner of a massive haul of information that will basically tell it everything about how Spirit ran its business.<\/p>\n<p>The haul reportedly spans 100 million company emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, 30 million lines of code, software algorithms, development metadata and records pertaining to the airline\u2019s revenue, aircraft operations and employee productivity, Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the information that Google has acquired relates to the airline\u2019s internal operations, and it has not been given access to things like Spirit\u2019s 97.5 million passenger profiles or its 50 million loyalty program records. To reassure anyone who may have flown with Spirit, Google said it will make sure that all of the data it has acquired will be \u201crigorously scrubbed\u201d of personally identifiable information by a third-party service provider, before it gets its hands on it.<\/p>\n<p>Google said that Spirit\u2019s data is a valuable asset that will help improve its AI products and models.<\/p>\n<p>In recent times, proprietary business data has become an in-demand resource for companies striving to develop more powerful AI models. In April, Gizmodo reported on the emergence of a nascent market for failed startups to <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sell off<\/a> their emails, slack messages, operational data and so on to AI firms in order to squeeze whatever value remains out of their dead businesses. Mercor, which lost out to Google this time around, is one of the companies at the center of this new market. According to a Wall Street Journal report that same month, it has been going around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/ai-training-data-mercor-offers-ed37d2a1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">offering<\/a> professionals hard cash in return for materials from their former employers, hoping to extract industry-specific knowledge that can be used for AI training.<\/p>\n<p>AI companies are willing to pay big money for this kind of data because they need much more of it if they\u2019re ever going to achieve their dream of creating AI models that can outshine humans. The likes of Google, OpenAI Group PBC and Anthropic PBC have already helped themselves to most of the world\u2019s free information that\u2019s posted online, and some experts have warned that the world is rapidly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/joemckendrick\/2026\/04\/14\/ai-may-be-running-out-of-data-stanford-report-warns\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">running out<\/a> of fresh data. It\u2019s a big concern, of course, because without fresh data, it\u2019s going to be much harder to improve on the AI systems we have now.<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Wikipedia<\/p>\n<p>Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE\u2019s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.<\/p>\n<p>15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more<br \/>\n11.4k+ theCUBE alumni \u2014 Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network<\/p>\n<p>SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of <a href=\"https:\/\/cts.businesswire.com\/ct\/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fsiliconangle.com%2F&amp;esheet=54119777&amp;newsitemid=20240910506833&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=SiliconANGLE&amp;index=9&amp;md5=646b1b564e2259100a2b8638aab0a552\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SiliconANGLE<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/cts.businesswire.com\/ct\/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecube.net%2F&amp;esheet=54119777&amp;newsitemid=20240910506833&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=theCUBE+Network&amp;index=10&amp;md5=7de2a85f95ab4a4a495cede20b8cb1da\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">theCUBE Network<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/cts.businesswire.com\/ct\/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fthecuberesearch.com%2F&amp;esheet=54119777&amp;newsitemid=20240910506833&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=theCUBE+Research&amp;index=11&amp;md5=7bb33676722925eb57d588ec343e4f6f\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">theCUBE Research<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/cts.businesswire.com\/ct\/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cube365.net%2F&amp;esheet=54119777&amp;newsitemid=20240910506833&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=CUBE365&amp;index=12&amp;md5=d310fb35919714e66ad8d42c9c0c1bc6\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CUBE365<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/cts.businesswire.com\/ct\/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecubeai.com%2F&amp;esheet=54119777&amp;newsitemid=20240910506833&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=theCUBE+AI&amp;index=13&amp;md5=b8b98472f8071b23ebb10ab9a8dd0683\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">theCUBE AI<\/a> and theCUBE SuperStudios \u2014 with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange \u2014 SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google LLC has won an auction to acquire massive volumes of internal business data from the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[24,1276,70450,7763,60647,37293,132,1429,8107,70451,70452,23419],"class_list":["post-143019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-google","tag-ai","tag-ai-models","tag-airline-data","tag-auction","tag-business-data","tag-business-operations","tag-google","tag-google-ai","tag-operational-data","tag-proprietary-business-data","tag-spirit-airlines","tag-training-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}