Bahattin Gonultas and Emir Yildirim
30 September 2026•Update: 30 September 2026
Artificial intelligence (AI) companies are on the lookout for large data sets from bankrupt firms to train their models, resulting in a new commercial market and a data security crisis in the global tech sector.
US tech giant Google and AI startup Micro1 submitted multimillion-dollar bids to buy internal communications and passenger data from Spirit Airlines, which had filed for bankruptcy.
Suppliers and workers are concerned about the potential leak of sensitive information.
Google bid $10 million for the data set, while Micro1 is willing to pay $12.5 million.
Spirit Airlines sold 27 aging Airbus aircraft for $668 million on Sept. 25 amid financial difficulties.
Some 97.5 million passenger records collected since 1992 are on the sales list, according to court documents filed with the New York Bankruptcy Court.
The database contains 13.7 million email addresses, loyalty program information and data from partner firms.
The package also includes personnel files for more than 175,000 workers and 1.5 million internal communications extracted from various channels like email and Microsoft Teams.
The court will approve the sale at a hearing expected to take place on Wednesday.
Companies selling their data while filing for bankruptcy has become a global business model.
Commercial information like financial data is not covered by data protection laws, leaving the entire process to be governed by contractual agreements, legal experts say.
