{
  "id": 1550800,
  "title": "Google is buying Spirit Airlines' old data for $10 million to improve its AI",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/google-is-buying-spirit-airlines-old-data-for-10-million-to-improve",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-17T19:49:25.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Business Insider",
    "slug": "business-insider",
    "url": "https://www.businessinsider.com/google-buys-spirit-airlines-data-ai-model-development-2026-8"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Google has secured ownership of Spirit Airlines' corporate data for $10 million, surpassing a competing bid from AI training startup Mercor for $7.5 million. According to Chapter 11 bankruptcy court documents, the data acquired by Google is fully anonymized and excludes any customer records. The purchase of the data was made public through the bankruptcy proceedings. A Google spokesperson confirmed that the data would be beneficial in enhancing products and AI models, but explicitly stated that they would not acquire any customer or credit card information. The acquisition of corporate data has become increasingly valuable for tech companies as they strive to enhance their AI models. Google's successful bid of $10 million follows a competitive auction, where Mercor initially matched Google's bid of $5 million and later offered $7 million, provided they could obtain the data first and subsequently anonymize it.",
  "summary": "Google bid $10 million for Spirit Airlines' data, beating Mercor's bid. Tech companies are racing to grab as much AI training data as they can.",
  "key_points": [
    "Google purchases Spirit Airlines data for $10 million",
    "Data is fully anonymized and excludes customer records",
    "Acquisition aims to improve Google's AI models"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}