What happened in this Tech story?

AI training labs are now routinely purchasing workspace data, code, and communications archives from failing startups, creating a new resale industry brokered by end-of-life firms like SimpleClosure and Sunset.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**SimpleClosure** added data sales to its services in April and through its Asset Hub has brokered over 150 deals, with 47% now including code or data transactions and $10 million-plus expected to flow back to startups by the end of 2026.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Google** outbid AI data firm Mercor in August to buy Spirit Airlines' data during bankruptcy for $10 million — 100 million emails, 500 million Teams messages, and 176,000 employee records — as Bloomberg separately reported SpaceX's AI unit is weighing similar startup-data purchases.

AI labs buy defunct startups' data to train models — SkimNews

By MIT Technology Review · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-10-13

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SimpleClosure added data sales to its services in April and through its Asset Hub has brokered over 150 deals, with 47% now including code or data transactions and $10 million-plus expected to flow back to startups by the end of 2026.
Google outbid AI data firm Mercor in August to buy Spirit Airlines' data during bankruptcy for $10 million — 100 million emails, 500 million Teams messages, and 176,000 employee records — as Bloomberg separately reported SpaceX's AI unit is weighing similar startup-data purchases.
Sunset, a rival broker, values dying clients' assets by head count, years of operation, and tool usage, with founder Brendan Mahony comparing operational exhaust data to "wood shavings" from particle board that turned out to have real value.
Keelan Miskell, who wound down his crypto startup, netted roughly $25,000 for his codebase and a pending ~$15,000 for workspace data across Google, Notion, Figma, and Slack — anonymous users he assumed had little worth.
Spirit Airlines' flight attendants' union objected to Google's purchase on privacy grounds, and attorney Greg Ewing described such workplace data as "legally radioactive," noting that emails and calendars embed doctor appointments, school pickups, and date-night plans.
Sale proceeds typically flow to senior creditors and investors rather than workers — a pattern Emory law professor Ifeoma Ajunwa calls "captured capital" — with no federal law currently requiring employers to obtain consent before selling worker data.

Why it matters: The 47% data-deal share at SimpleClosure and Google's $10 million Spirit buy show this resale market is moving past early-adopter phase, but with worker privacy details embedded in workspace archives and proceeds skipping the people whose labor produced the data, the legal exposure for AI labs is building faster than the licensing frameworks to govern it.