Google has won a $10 million bankruptcy auction for internal business data from collapsed Spirit Airlines and plans to use the material to improve its products and train AI models. The package covers employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars and other operational records from the U.S. carrier’s data archive, while customer and credit card information are excluded.
The sale comes as Spirit liquidates assets through Chapter 11 proceedings in the Southern District of New York. Court filings indicate the dataset was de-identified before transfer and that a third party will remove any personally identifiable information before Google receives it. The company’s bid beat a $7.5 million offer from AI recruiting startup Mercor.
The contents of the archive are unusually broad, spanning revenue, aircraft operations, productivity, marketing, human resources and project management material. That gives Google access to real-world airline workflow data that could be useful for model training, especially in areas involving large-scale communications and operational decision-making.
Court approval was still pending, with a hearing scheduled for later in the week. Even so, the transaction highlights how bankruptcy sales are increasingly becoming a source of valuable data assets for artificial intelligence developers.