Google Buys Bankrupt Airline's Digital Remains for $10 Million
Google has agreed to purchase the digital remains of Spirit Airlines for $10 million. The package includes around 100 million company emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, and 30 million lines of code. This archive also contains employee records dating back to August 1986.
The bankrupt airline stopped flying in May, having filed for Chapter 11 with around $8.1 billion in debt. Google opened the bidding at $5 million, but AI data company Mercor countered at $7 million after being given the option to take raw data first and anonymize it in-house. Mercor sits as backup buyer at $7.5 million.
The value of Spirit's records lies in their ability to link support tickets, arguments, commits, reviews, and operational results. This chain of consequence is what AI agents need to learn multi-step work, and it doesn't exist on the open web in that shape.
Google has aviation reasons for purchasing these records as well, having signed a five-year partnership with Ryanair covering fleet operations and maintenance scheduling.