Research
How much do AI companies pay for company data?
Public prices for company operational records and public prices for publisher or media licenses are different markets. They are listed in separate tables. Across 5 operational or court-auction rows with a stated dollar figure, the amounts run from $10,000 to $12,500,000 (US dollars, as stated in the linked sources, as of 2026-11-04). Our payout tiers are not in either table.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Version | 1.0.0 |
| Deals listed | 15 |
| Rows with a stated dollar amount | 7 |
| Temporal coverage | 2023-07/2026-11 |
| License | CC BY 4.0 |
| CSV | company-data-price-index.csv |
Findings
The operational-records table and the publisher-license table are not one price series. The tables below are one part of the company data market research.
- 6 rows describe a company's own operational records or a court bid for those records. 9 rows are licenses to news, books, forums, or stock media. Those counts are not one price series.
- Among 5 operational rows with a stated dollar amount, the figures run from $10,000 to $12,500,000. The low end is a per-company range reported for closed companies. The high end is a total court bid. A per-company payment and a total bid are different units, so the span is not an average.
- 8 rows stay in the tables because the primary source gave no dollar figure. 7 rows state a dollar amount. An empty amount means no figure was disclosed; it is not zero, and it is not a number taken from a roundup.
- 3 rows are court bids rather than closed sales. The auction notice says the selected bid and the alternate bid are subject to a court order. The later filing is a notice of intent, not a selection of that bid.
A dollar figure in one row is the amount that source stated, in the unit that row names. Do not add a per-company range to a multi-year publisher total and call the sum a market price.
Read how to sell company data to AI companies when the question is your own records rather than these public deals.
Methodology
A table of publicly reported prices for licensing or buying data for AI, compiled by Vetrix Labs from company announcements, securities filings, and bankruptcy court filings. Every row links to its primary source, including a row whose source states no dollar figure. Operational company records and published-content licenses are listed separately. Our payout tiers are not rows in this dataset.
What a row is
One row is one deal, one program, or one bid. The record class is operational records, published content, stock media, or a community corpus. Court bids for a company's own records are operational records, and their type is a court bid.
This edition has 6 operational rows and 9 rows in the other classes. A program row is a price the company published for a class of records. A reported-range row is a figure taken from a filing or from a named outlet when the company's own page does not print it.
Inclusion
Every row links to its primary source. A row with no dollar figure is one whose source gave none. Our tiers are not rows. The data partner is not a row, and a row does not hint at who that partner is.
A roundup site that collects other people's deal stories is not a source. If the only number for a deal lives on that kind of page, the deal is absent.
Primary source
The first place to look is the party's own release or filing. The next is the court's document. A major outlet is used only for a fact the primary document does not give, and the sentence then names that outlet.
The SimpleClosure range is reported by Forbes, because SimpleClosure's AssetHub page does not print it and the Forbes article does, quoting the chief executive. The Spirit amounts are taken from the auction notice and from micro1's notice of intent, not from a news recap of those bids. The Reddit contract value is the figure printed in the Form S-1. The filing does not name the customers, so the row does not name them either.
License
CC BY 4.0 covers our compilation: the selection of rows, the column structure, and the wording of the table. It does not cover the underlying articles, filings, or vendor pages. Those remain the publishers'.
The citation for this edition is: Vetrix Labs (2026). Company data price index, v1.0.0 [dataset]. https://vetrixlabs.ai/research/company-data-price-index
Prices for company operational records
6 public rows describe a company's own operational records or a court bid for those records.
For why AI companies want these records at all, read why AI companies buy Slack and email data.
| Party | Counterparty | Type | Amount (USD) | Unit | Year-month | What was sold | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SimpleClosure | Closed companies | Reported range | $10,000–$100,000 | per company | 2026-04 | Forbes reported that SimpleClosure's chief executive said the firm had processed nearly 100 deals for closed companies in the past year, recovered over $1 million, and typically paid between $10,000 and $100,000 per company. | Forbes |
| micro1 | Companies that are no longer operating | Program price | at least $100,000 | per package | 2026-11 | micro1's referral page states company compensation of $100K-$3M+ for approved data packages from companies that are no longer operating, and it lists a requirement of 30 or more employees. | micro1 |
| Turing | AI labs | Program price | No figure in the primary source | per company | 2026-11 | Turing's Lazarus page says it prepares a company's operating record, licenses that record to AI labs, and pays the company on each sale, and it gives no dollar amount for a license. | Turing |
| Spirit Airlines | Court bid | $10,000,000 | total bid | 2026-08 | The debtors' August 14, 2026 notice selects Google LLC's bid of $10,000,000 for Spirit's de-identified data, subject to a court order, and the attached bill of sale lists email, chat, documents, and other operational records. Read what the Spirit filings say. | U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York | |
| Mercor | Spirit Airlines | Court bid | $7,500,000 | total bid | 2026-08 | The same August 14, 2026 notice selects Mercor.io Corporation's bid of $7,500,000 as the alternate bid for that de-identified data, and it says this bid is not the successful bid. Read what the Spirit filings say. | U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York |
| micro1 | Spirit Airlines | Court bid | $12,500,000 | total bid | 2026-09 | micro1 Inc.'s notice of intent, dated September 3, 2026, says it intends to submit a competing cash bid of $12,500,000 for the de-identified data, and the notice is not a selection of that bid. Read what the Spirit filings say. | micro1 Inc. |
To weigh one of these data programs against the other ways out, read micro1 alternatives or Turing Project Lazarus alternatives.
Prices for published content and media
These rows are licenses to published news, books, code forums, or stock media, not a price for one company's Slack or email.
| Party | Counterparty | Type | Amount (USD) | Unit | Year-month | What was sold | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shutterstock | OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2023-07 | Shutterstock's July 11, 2023 release says OpenAI licensed additional access to its image, video, and music libraries and associated metadata under a six-year agreement, and the release states no dollar amount. | Shutterstock, Inc. |
| Axel Springer | OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2023-12 | OpenAI's December 13, 2023 post says ChatGPT will show summaries of selected Axel Springer news with attribution and links, and that the content may also be used to train models, and the post states no dollar amount. | OpenAI |
| News Corp | OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2024-05 | OpenAI's May 22, 2024 post says it received access to current and archived content from named News Corp news publications, and the post states no dollar amount. | OpenAI |
| Informa | Microsoft | Publisher license | at least $10,000,000 | total contract | 2024-05 | Informa's May 8, 2024 market update says a non-exclusive agreement with Microsoft includes an initial data access fee written as $10m+ and a recurring payment across 2025, 2026, and 2027 for Taylor & Francis Advanced Learning content and data. | Informa PLC |
| Associated Press | OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2023-07 | The Associated Press reported on July 13, 2023 that OpenAI licensed part of the AP text archive, and that the financial terms were not disclosed. | Associated Press |
| Licensing customers | Reported range | $203,000,000 | total contract | 2024-01 | Reddit's February 22, 2024 Form S-1 says that in January 2024 it entered data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms of two to three years. | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission | |
| OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2024-05 | Reddit's May 16, 2024 announcement says OpenAI will access Reddit's Data API to bring Reddit content into ChatGPT and new products, and the announcement states no dollar amount. | Reddit, Inc. | |
| Financial Times | OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2024-04 | The Financial Times' April 29, 2024 release says ChatGPT can show selected attributed summaries, quotes, and links to FT journalism under a licensing agreement, and the release states no dollar amount. | Financial Times |
| Stack Overflow | OpenAI | Publisher license | No figure in the primary source | total contract | 2024-05 | Stack Overflow's May 6, 2024 release says OpenAI will use OverflowAPI so ChatGPT can surface attributed technical knowledge from Stack Overflow, and the release states no dollar amount. | Stack Overflow |
Our payout tiers are not in these tables
Our payout tiers are on the estimate page, and they are a program price, not a market observation.
The tiers answer a different question: what our program might pay a company that qualifies. They are not observations of other deals, so they are not in either table above. For a figure that applies to your own company, estimate what your records could pay.
Reading a court bid or a publisher total next to a program tier would make the tier look like a market quote. The estimate page keeps that figure with the rules that produce it.
Read who buys company data for AI for buyer categories and the checks a seller should make.
Limitations
The index is not a survey of what a typical company will be paid.
Many deals are never disclosed, so the range of stated amounts is not a market average. A court bid is not a closed sale until an order says so. A publisher's multi-year total is not a per-company price for Slack or email. A row that says the primary source gave no dollar figure is a result. It is not a hole to fill from a blog.
Figures are nominal US dollars as the sources stated them. They are not adjusted for inflation. We did not audit the underlying data rooms, code repositories, or news archives. The index records what the linked document says about price and about what was sold.
Units differ. A per-company range, a per-package band, a total bid, and a total contract can sit in the same operational table because each is a price for operational records. They are not interchangeable. The unit column is part of the figure.
Vendor deletion windows are a different dataset: how long vendors keep data after you cancel.
Download and cite
Download the company data price index CSV. The file starts with a UTF-8 byte order mark and uses CRLF line endings. An empty amount means no figure was disclosed; it is not zero.
| Column | Type | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| id | string | Row identifier. |
| party | string | Company or program named in the source. |
| counterparty | string | Other party to the deal, or the group the source describes. |
| deal_type | string | program-published, reported-range, court-auction-bid, or publisher-license. |
| record_class | string | operational-records, published-content, stock-media, or community-corpus. |
| amount_min_usd | integer | Lowest stated US dollar amount. Empty when the source gives no floor. |
| amount_max_usd | integer | Highest stated US dollar amount. Empty when the source gives no ceiling. |
| unit | string | per company, per package, total bid, per year, or total contract. |
| year_month | year-month | Year and month of the deal or the source, as YYYY-MM. |
| what_was_sold | string | One sentence on the records or license the source describes. |
| source_publisher | string | Publisher of the source. |
| source_title | string | Title of the source. |
| source_url | string | URL of the source. |
| checked_on | string | Date the linked source was current, as YYYY-MM-DD. |
| note | string | Extra fact from the same source. Empty when there is none. |
Use this citation:
Vetrix Labs (2026). Company data price index, v1.0.0 [dataset]. https://vetrixlabs.ai/research/company-data-price-index
| Version | Date | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | 2026-11-04 | First edition of the rows, each linked to its primary source. |
Related
- Research
Sourced datasets on public prices for company data, each with a CSV.
- Deletion windows
Compared vendor deletion windows after cancellation, from the same checked records as the system pages.
- Tool stacks by size
Applicant tool names by headcount band, cells under 10 omitted.
- How to sell company data
How to sell or license company data to AI companies, and which route fits.
Questions about the price index
How much do AI companies pay for one company's operational records?
Operational rows with a stated dollar amount run from $10,000 to $12,500,000. Read the operational-records table for each deal, and count only the rows that state a dollar amount. Publisher licenses are a different table and are not a price for one company's chat or email. A court bid remains a bid until a court order says the sale closed. The amounts are nominal US dollars as the sources stated them.
Why are publisher licensing deals in a separate table from company records?
A publisher license buys a corpus of articles, books, code-forum posts, or media the publisher already sells. An operational-records row is about a company's own systems, such as chat, email, or a court bid for that data. Adding those prices together would describe two markets as if they were one. The tables stay apart so a news-license total is not read as a price for one company's records.
Why is a well-known deal missing from the price index?
A deal is absent when its figure is not in a company announcement, a securities filing, or a court document. A number that appears only on a deal roundup is not in the index. Some rows stay in the table with no dollar amount because the primary source gave none. The changelog records rows added later. Every row that is listed links to its primary source.
Does the price index include what Vetrix pays?
No. Our tiers are not market observations. They are on the estimate page, for a company checking its own possible payout. The index does not name our data partner. A public deal in the tables is someone else's agreement, taken from that agreement's source. Your own figure is a separate question from these rows.
Can I republish the company data price index?
The compilation is under CC BY 4.0. Cite the string in Download and cite. That license does not give you the underlying articles, filings, or vendor pages. Those remain the publishers'. Link the source URL beside any figure you repeat. The CSV and the HTML table are the same rows, so either one is the current table.
Sources
- Forbes. AI's New Training Data: Your Old Work Slacks And Emails. Checked 2026-11-04
- micro1. Defunct Company Data Partnership. Checked 2026-11-04
- Turing. Lazarus by Turing. Checked 2026-11-04
- U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York. Notice of Auction Results and Scheduled Hearing for the Deidentified Data, Dkt. 1463, Case No. 25-11897 (SHL). Checked 2026-11-04
- micro1 Inc.. Notice of micro1 Inc.'s Intent to Submit a Competing and Superior Bid for the Deidentified Data, Case No. 25-11897 (SHL). Checked 2026-11-04
- Shutterstock, Inc.. Shutterstock Expands Partnership with OpenAI, Signs New Six-Year Agreement to Provide High-Quality Training Data. Checked 2026-11-04
- OpenAI. Partnership with Axel Springer to deepen beneficial use of AI in journalism. Checked 2026-11-04
- OpenAI. A landmark multi-year global partnership with News Corp. Checked 2026-11-04
- Informa PLC. Informa PLC: Market Update, 8 May 2024. Checked 2026-11-04
- Associated Press. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI signs deal with AP to license news stories. Checked 2026-11-04
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Reddit, Inc. Form S-1, filed February 22, 2024. Checked 2026-11-04
- Reddit, Inc.. Reddit and OpenAI Build Partnership. Checked 2026-11-04
- Financial Times. Financial Times announces strategic partnership with OpenAI. Checked 2026-11-04
- Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow and OpenAI Partner to Strengthen the World's Most Popular Large Language Models. Checked 2026-11-04