Even Emails and Internal Chats of Bankrupt Firms Are Valuable... Google Wins Auction for 14 Billion Won

Google Acquires Internal Data From Bankrupt Airline
For In-House AI Training Purposes
"Gold Rush" for Real-World Data

Google has acquired internal data from Spirit Airlines, the U.S. budget airline that filed for bankruptcy last May, for 14 billion won. Google plans to utilize the acquired internal data—including emails and chats—for training its own artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Google logo in January 2024. Photo by Reuters and Yonhap News

On August 17 (local time), U.S. online media outlets such as Axios reported, citing documents submitted to the U.S. Southern District Bankruptcy Court in New York, that Google won the final bid in a data auction held on August 14 for Spirit Airlines, placing the highest bid of 10 million dollars (approximately 14.1 billion won).

Through this auction, Google is purchasing data accumulated during Spirit Airlines’ internal operations and development processes, as well as records of internal communications among executives and employees. This includes approximately 100 million emails, 500 million internal messenger chats—including those from Microsoft (MS) Teams—internal documents, meeting materials, and 30 million lines of programming code. Google plans to use this data for training its own large language models (LLMs) and related purposes.

However, according to Spirit Airlines, personal identification information, including customer data, credit card payment details, and other legal secrets, is not included. A Google spokesperson stated, “We have acquired some of Spirit Airlines’ corporate data, which can help improve our products and AI models. We will not receive any personal information. Before we obtain the data, a third party will thoroughly remove all personally identifiable information.”

The court is scheduled to hold a hearing on August 19 to determine whether to grant final approval for Spirit Airlines’ asset sale. Should Google lose its bid, the opportunity will pass to Merkor, an AI data specialist firm that placed a backup bid of 7.5 million dollars. Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy in May, due to mounting debts and the impact of high oil prices, leading to the layoff of about 17,000 employees and a complete suspension of operations.

This is not the first time such data sales have occurred. According to the IT specialist media outlet TechSpot in April, SimpleCloser, a corporate liquidation specialist, has been selling emails, Slack messages, internal documents, and source code from defunct startups to AI development firms after performing de-identification of personal information. Over the past year, SimpleCloser has brokered about 100 such deals, with transaction values ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 dollars per company. Dori Yona, CEO of SimpleCloser, explained at the time, “There’s a gold rush-like atmosphere as companies vie to obtain real-world data.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.