AI Labs Buy Dead Startups' Data to Train Models — SkimNews
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- Keelan Miskell wound down his crypto startup this year and sold its digital archives — including the code base — to AI labs for roughly $25,000, though part of the deal remains pending.
- Miskell said he initially didn't think the data was worth much because the startup's users were anonymous and the company was only a few years old.
- AI labs are purchasing data and code from defunct startups specifically to use as training material for their AI models.
- The sale gave Miskell an unexpected revenue stream from a failed venture whose users, code, and archives he had assumed had no remaining market value.
Why it matters: Founders shutting down startups now have a new exit option — selling leftover code and archives to AI labs for model training, as Miskell's roughly $25,000 deal illustrates. AI labs gain a cheap, pre-built dataset pipeline from companies that already failed, converting other founders' abandoned work into raw material for their models. For a founder whose startup was years old at most, a five-figure payout reframes 'data we couldn't sell' into a meaningful shutdown windfall.
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