Google Snatches Up Spirit Airlines' Valuable Data for $10 Million

Google has acquired Spirit Airlines' data for $10 million as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. This includes hundreds of millions of emails, Microsoft Teams chats, billions of flight pricing records, and anonymized passenger records.

The data is being sold to pay off the airline's approximately $8.1 billion in debt. Google beat out Mercor.io Corp., an AI-focused recruitment firm, with a bid that was $2.5 million higher than the latter's offer.

The purchased dataset includes 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, 7.2 billion records for competitors' flights, and 7.5 billion passenger transaction records from 2008. The data also contains employee records, revenue information, aircraft operations data, and more.

However, the company will not gain access to personal data, including 97.5 million passenger profiles or 50.2 million customer records from the Free Spirit loyalty program. A third-party service will scrub the data of any personally identifiable information before it is received by Google.