Google Pays $10M for Spirit Airlines Data to Train AI

Google outbid AI data startup Mercor, which offered $7.5 million, in the auction held in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The tech giant plans to use the internal operations material to advance product development and train its artificial intelligence models.

The acquired assets include approximately 100 million corporate emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, 30 million lines of custom software code, and more than 175,000 employee records dating back to 1986. The archive also contains operational records, flight scheduling data, internal financial audits, marketing strategies, and pricing metrics tracking billions of historical transactions.

Google confirmed the transaction excludes personal traveler information. Spirit's databases with 97.5 million passenger profiles and 50.2 million loyalty program accounts were not part of the purchase. An independent third party will anonymize the dataset to strip out names, contact credentials, and other personal markers before transferring files to Google, with Google funding the process and retaining review rights over scrubbing protocols.

The sale remains subject to judicial authorization. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean H. Lane is scheduled to consider final approval during a court hearing on Wednesday.