Google has won a bankruptcy auction to acquire a large collection of Spirit Airlines’ internal company data for $10 million, with the data expected to support artificial intelligence training.
According to a filing in the US Bankruptcy Court, Google outbid AI recruiting company Mercor, which offered $7.5 million. Mercor will remain the backup buyer if Google’s deal does not go through.
The data includes around 100 million employee emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, financial and operational records, pricing models, booking information, refund histories, about 3.4 million payroll records and Spirit’s software code. Some records reportedly date back to 1986.
However, passenger information is excluded from the sale. Spirit’s passenger profiles, loyalty programme records and credit card details will not be transferred. Google said the data it receives will be scrubbed of personally identifiable information by a third party.
Spirit stopped flying on May 2 after filing for bankruptcy for the second time in two years. The airline had around $8.1 billion in debt and laid off approximately 17,000 employees as its assets were sold off.
