Court filings on Aug. 18 showed Google won an auction with a US$10 million bid for internal data from Spirit Airlines, a US low-cost carrier, topping a US$7.5 million bid from Mercor.

The sale still needs approval from a federal bankruptcy judge.

The package includes more than 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chat records, 30 million lines of code, development metadata, software models and algorithms, and operating data such as revenue, aircraft operations, and employee productivity records, but not consumer data.

Google said a third party will remove personally identifiable information and that it will not try to re-identify users.

Spirit entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2024 in a prearranged effort to cut debt and recapitalise, including converting US$795 million of funded debt into equity.

Mercor, a US company that says it connects experts with AI labs and enterprises to train models, could acquire the dataset if Google’s deal falls through.

US bankruptcy law limits sales of personally identifiable information, while restructuring advisers have described bulk sales of internal emails, chat logs, and code as a growing but legally risky source of AI training data.

🔗 Source: Reuters

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