Google Wins Spirit Airlines' Corporate Data for $10 Million in Bankruptcy Auction

Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy has led to a bidding war for its deidentified corporate data. Google won the auction, purchasing the data for $10 million on August 14, 2026. Mercor.io Corporation, a startup that supplies human-labelled data to AI developers, placed a backup bid of $7.5 million.

The virtual auction was held under bankruptcy court procedures, allowing sales of the debtors' assets free and clear of liens, claims, and other interests. The deidentified data includes corporate rather than consumer information. It covers 100 million emails across 80,000 Microsoft 365 accounts dating from 2018, alongside 17.1 million OneDrive items and 20.6 million SharePoint items.

The sale also includes software, specifically 516 source code repositories covering web, mobile, and backend systems, holding roughly 30 million lines of code. Revenue data held in Navitaire runs from May 2008, covering 190.3 billion passenger name records and 7.5 trillion transactions. Commercial operations carry the largest raw counts.

However, customer-facing rows are marked 'Not Included', covering 97.5 million customer profiles, 50.2 million loyalty members, 740,000 credit card holders, and 44 million earned miles. Marketing systems, contact center material, website analytics, and regulatory complaint files are also excluded.

The deidentification machinery requires Spirit to first deliver the files to a third party acceptable to the buyer, which takes reasonable measures to remove or transform data elements so the result cannot be associated with a particular consumer. The certification standard is written into Section 3(c), requiring the agent to certify that the assets were deidentified in accordance with applicable law.