In 2026, most AI buyers that publish a price for a company's operating records start near $100,000 and top out between $1 million and $4 million (buyer program pages, October 2026). Reported deals and offers for small and mid-size companies mostly fall between about $110,000 and $1.2 million. Startups that shut down have typically received $10,000 to $100,000 (Forbes via Fast Company, April 2026).
On this page
Where you land depends on years of history, how many connected systems you include, your industry, exclusivity, and whether you clearly own the rights.
What have companies like mine been paid or offered?
Most deals are private, so the visible numbers are a sample. The table lists reported examples and says what kind of figure each one is. Owner posts and company case studies are not independently confirmed. All of them are in our deal ledger with links.
| Company | Records | Amount | Kind of figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC companies | Operating records | $150,000 | Press report (headline only) | The Information, July 2026 |
| Company, size not stated | Internal Slack channels, SOPs, process docs | $1,000,000 | Offer from an unnamed AI lab, posted by someone at the company | X, July 2026 |
| Accounting firm, 60 staff | Five years of workpapers, reconciliations and tax files | $350,000 | Broker claim, not verified | Telegraph Lab, October 2026 |
| Engineering firm, 70 staff | CAD drawings, calculations, reports | $450,000 | Broker claim, not verified | Telegraph Lab, October 2026 |
| Small manufacturers, 60 to 130 staff | Operating records, 2-year license | $500,000 to $1.2M each | Grepped founder's post, not verified | X, October 2026 |
| Freight broker, 100 staff | Rate quotes, dispatch, claims | $650,000 | Broker claim, not verified | Telegraph Lab, October 2026 |
| Roofing company | Full operating record, perpetual exclusive license | $450,000 | Buyer case study | Polyshares, October 2026 |
| Marketing agency | Full operating record, perpetual exclusive license | $110,000 | Buyer case study | Polyshares, October 2026 |
| Shut-down startups | Slack, email, code | $10,000 to $100,000 each, about 100 deals | Shutdown service, to the press | Forbes via Fast Company, April 2026 |
| Spirit Airlines, in bankruptcy | About 100M emails and 500M Teams chats | $10,000,000 | Winning auction bid, not yet approved by the court | Axios, August 2026 |
One buyer gave an average: micro1's CEO posted that it had paid $5.8 million to 9 businesses in 24 hours, over $600,000 each on average (X, September 2026). That is micro1's own figure.
The Spirit sale is still open. Mercor was the next-highest bidder at $7.5 million (Axios, August 2026), micro1 filed a $12.5 million competing offer in September (Bloomberg, September 2026), and the court hearing was moved to November 6, 2026 (TravelPulse, October 2026).
What price ranges do buyers publish?
Data Licensors, the company that publishes this page, also licenses company records, so it appears in this table. Rows are sorted by name. Each buyer page has the terms and sources.
| Buyer | Published range | Kind | Who they ask for |
|---|---|---|---|
| AfterQuery | Not published | Not published | Established companies with a few years of history |
| Data Licensors | Own price not published; we cite $100K to $1.2M for 20 to 500 staff | Market range from other companies' deals, not our payouts | 20 to 500 staff |
| Endless | Up to $4M | Broker headline | Roughly 30+ employees |
| G2i | $100K to $2M | Published range | 1+ year of history, one app is enough |
| Handshake AI | $100K to $4M+ | Published range | 20+ full-time staff, 3+ years |
| Labelbox Prism | About $50K to $1M+ | Published range | Not stated |
| micro1 | $100K to $500K, $500K to $2M, $2M+ tiers | Published range | 30+ full-time staff |
| Nyne | $100K+ "commonly" | Published range | 20+ US W-2 staff, 3+ years |
| Polyshares | $100K to $2M and above | Published range | Any company with real history |
| Scale AI | $10K to $1M+, "illustrative" | Published range | 40+ employees preferred |
| SuperAnnotate | $100K to $1M+, "indicative" | Published range | Any size |
| Troveo | "Six figures" | Broker claim | Not stated |
| Turing | Up to $1M, one payment | Published range | Any company with real operating history |
| Your Data Value | $200K to $2M typical | Broker claim | 30+ employees |
All ranges are from each company's own page, checked October 2026. A published range is a marketing floor and ceiling, not a quote.
Which kinds of records are worth the most?
Buyers pay most for a connected record of real work: a request, the chat about it, the ticket, the fix and the outcome. micro1's chief revenue officer told Business Insider (October 2026) that if a company won't include its Slack, CRM or email records, the rest of the records are worth less.
| What you license | What reported prices look like |
|---|---|
| Full operating record across several systems | Six figures for most small and mid-size companies (see the first table) |
| Chat history (Slack or Teams) | A post on X described a $1M offer from an unnamed AI lab for internal Slack data and process docs (X, July 2026) |
| One private codebase on its own | Up to $10,000 per qualifying codebase at HUD (DEV Community, June 2026). Turing's CEO told The Information it paid an average in the tens of thousands of dollars per failed-startup codebase (Fortune, September 2026) |
| Records of a startup that shut down | $10,000 to $100,000 typical (Forbes via Fast Company, April 2026) |
More detail by tool is in our guides on Slack data, email archives, tickets and Jira and CRM records.
What raises the price?
- Years of continuous history. Polyshares says a long, well-kept record can price above a much larger business that threw its history away.
- Records that connect. The same job seen in chat, email, tickets and files is worth more than any one of them. SimpleClosure found that 95% of the workspaces it reviewed use Slack, 87% Google Drive and 82% GitHub. It says these systems together capture the context behind the work, which is where buyers increasingly see value (SimpleClosure, September 2026).
- Visible reasoning. Disagreements, corrections and approvals in writing show how decisions are made. Polyshares names this as a price driver, and Labelbox lists human decisions, escalations and expert corrections among the highest-value data.
- A field with few written records. SimpleClosure reports demand for manufacturing, energy, banking, insurance, professional services and logistics data, where operational records are scarce.
- Headcount. More people writing in the systems means more examples. The CEO of data company Mode.Inc told Business Insider (October 2026) that more white-collar staff makes a corpus more valuable.
- Exclusivity. An exclusive license means only that buyer may use the records, so buyers pay more for it. SuperAnnotate says it prices on rarity, depth and exclusivity. Business Insider reported lower demand for a codebase a rival lab already has.
What lowers the price or rules records out?
- A short operating history. Several buyers ask for at least one to three years.
- Records you hold but do not own. Polyshares notes that material under a client master agreement belongs to the client.
- Personal details that cannot be removed cleanly. See how de-identification works.
- Scraped or duplicate material. micro1's license terms require the seller to confirm the data was not scraped. SimpleClosure found about 37% of raw code disappeared once third-party, generated and duplicate code was removed (SimpleClosure, September 2026).
- Health records and consumer personal data. Some buyers, including SellMyData and Data Licensors, say they do not accept them.
How much should I trust headline numbers?
Treat them by type. A published range tells you a buyer's floor and ceiling. A case study is one deal the company chose to show, in its own words. A broker claim is not checked by anyone else. A press report of an offer is not a signed deal.
Two cautions from 2026 reporting. First, Business Insider (October 2026) found owners receiving six-figure "exploding offers" that expire in 48 hours, a tactic that limits comparison. Second, the largest figure in the market, the Spirit Airlines auction, covers a whole airline's archive and is not yet final. Buyers also disagree with each other: Nick Heiner of Surge AI told MIT Technology Review (October 2026) that quotes vary widely because valuations rest on "research theses" about how many useful tasks a dataset will yield.
How do I find out what my records are worth?
- List your systems, the years of history in each, and roughly how many people used them.
- Mark what you would leave out: client files, HR, payroll, anything under a contract that forbids sharing.
- Get a quick estimate to see where you likely fall.
- Ask at least two buyers for a written offer on the same scope, after they review a de-identified sample. Compare price, term, exclusivity and payment timing, not just the headline. Our licensing agreement guide lists the terms to check.
Our homepage figure, $100,000 to $1.2 million for companies with 20 to 500 staff, summarizes other companies' deals and offers in our ledger. It is not our own payout record and not a promise for any one company (Data Licensors, October 2026).
