Google’s next big AI model could eventually use a trove of old Spirit Airlines data.
Google successfully bid $10 million for large amounts of corporate data Spirit Airlinesthe budget airline that collapsed earlier this year, according to Chapter 11 bankruptcy court filings. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that this data from Spirit Airlines “could be useful in improving our products and AI models.”
“We purchase the company’s internal data and custom software, but we do not purchase their customer or credit card information,” the spokesperson said.
AI training startup Mercor made a rival bid of $7.5 million.
“Companies have decades of data showing how real work is done, and that data is now some of the most valuable material for training and evaluating AI,” a Mercor spokesperson said in a statement. “We work with leading companies to license their operational data to the labs building the next generation of models. Spirit was that same process applied to a bankruptcy.”
A Spirit Airlines representative declined to comment beyond the court filings.
The move comes as tech companies, having largely exhausted the open internet for training data, are rushing to collect as much data as possible in other forms.
Business data is especially valuable because it can help train bots to handle customer complaints more effectively or debug websites. For example, AI training startup Micro1 announced a new program earlier this year, paying 50 mid-market companies $100,000 to $2 million for access to their anonymized data.
According to the documents, the auction for Spirit Airlines’ data was competitive. Google offered $5 million, but Mercor countered with $5.2 million. Mercor also said it was willing to pay more — $7 million — if it could first obtain the raw data and then anonymize it. Ultimately, Google bid $10 million and won the deal.
The red-hot race to build the best AI models has led to unconventional tactics for acquiring business data.
For example, Meta announced an initiative to track the keystrokes and mouse movements of its employees so it can improve the way its AI uses computers. Meta has suspended the program after an internal data exposure and a strong response from employees.
