The remnants of Spirit Airlines now include a contested data trove. AI training startup Micro1 has jumped into the carrier’s bankruptcy with a $12.5M bid for its corporate records, arriving after Google already won an auction for the same archive at $10M.
The records span roughly 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, 100 million emails and 16 million customer chat sessions, according to court filings cited by Bloomberg. Spirit is liquidating through Chapter 11, and the sale of its internal data is meant to raise money for creditors.
The auction history explains the fight. Google opened at $5M, data rival Mercor pushed its counteroffer toward $7M, and Google sealed the deal at $10M before Micro1’s late entry. Founder and chief executive Ali Ansari calls his offer “materially higher” and Google’s winning number “actually quite low.” Google says the purchase covers internal data and custom software, not customer or credit card information.
Approval now rests with a federal bankruptcy judge in New York, who postponed a hearing after former Spirit flight attendants objected over how their personal data might be used. The next hearing is set for September 9.
The episode shows how far AI developers will go for fresh training material as the open internet gets picked clean, with corporate archives that document real-world communication now commanding premium prices, even from defunct companies.
