Google pays $10M for Spirit Airlines’ corporate data trove in bankruptcy auction

When Spirit Airlines stopped flying, it still had something worth fighting over: decades of internal communications. Google won a bankruptcy auction to acquire the defunct carrier’s sprawling dataset for $10 million, beating out AI-focused data firm Mercor, which had bid $7.5 million. The haul is enormous. Roughly 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, plus spreadsheets, calendars, marketing materials, operational records, and pricing data covering approximately 34 years of business history. Google plans to use it to improve its products and train AI models. A dead airline’s data gets a second life Spirit Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025, weighed down by mounting debt and soaring jet fuel prices made worse by geopolitical disruptions. The budget carrier shut down operations entirely in early May 2026, shifting into full liquidation mode. Google’s winning bid still requires court approval, which remains pending. But the structure of the deal includes a notable safeguard: all personally identifiable information and customer-sensitive data will be scrubbed by a third-party service before Google takes possession. The emerging market for corporate ...