Defunct company data: who buys it and on what terms

Who buys data from defunct companies?

Before you cancel the company's Slack, email or code hosting, check what its records are worth. AI developers now pay for the operational records of closing and closed companies, such as chat and email archives, tickets, documents and code (public deals). A free valuation takes six questions about the business and no files.

Three kinds of buyer deal with companies that have stopped trading. Some AI data companies run a published track for them. Wind-down services sell the records as part of the closing. Others approach founders directly or buy one kind of record for a specific use. Terms are as each company publishes them, checked in November 2026.

micro1 Defunct Company Data Partnership: terms and payment

micro1 lists the defunct track beside its enterprise program with a one-line brief: "We are acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating." Company compensation is $100K to $3M+ for approved data packages. The listed requirements are 30+ employees, 10+ countries, English and all industries (micro1).

Its process has four steps: discovery and pricing, contracting, delivery and acceptance, and payment. The contract includes a commitment not to resell or distribute your data until personal and identifying information has been anonymized. Once the company transfers its data, micro1 has 30 days to review and approve it, then asks for an invoice and pays within 30 days of invoicing. Compensation is based on the quality, uniqueness and value of the data, in tiers of $100K to $500K, $500K to $3M and $3M+, and data is licensed only to labs and enterprises in the U.S. and allied countries (micro1 data partnerships).

For the enterprise track and the rest of the program, see the micro1 company data partnerships guide.

Source: micro1: data partnership tracks, including the Defunct Company Data Partnership

Turing Project Lazarus: active, winding down or wound down

Lazarus accepts companies that are active, winding down or wound down, and a mutual NDA is signed before any data moves (Turing). It gives each stage its own advice. A winding-down company should start before subscriptions lapse, because chat and CRM history can disappear within weeks of shutting off. A wound-down company can still sell if it kept exports or still has admin access.

It pays by revenue share, not a fixed price. Turing prepares the record at its own cost (de-identification, cleanup and packaging), licenses it non-exclusively to AI labs and pays the company on every sale. For the first 90 days Turing is the only one selling the record; after that the company can renew or opt out. If nothing sells, the company owes nothing and can take the record elsewhere after 90 days (How Lazarus works).

There are five steps: a two-minute questionnaire, the NDA, rough volumes per system, samples, then quality control and one revenue share agreement. Its QA team reports on samples within 5 business days. More in the Turing Project Lazarus guide.

Source: Turing: Project Lazarus

SimpleClosure AssetHub and Sunset: data sales inside a wind-down

Wind-down services close the company and sell what it leaves behind. SimpleClosure's AssetHub sells two kinds of asset to vetted buyers: source code (repositories, documentation and tests) and workspace data from how the team worked. There is no upfront cost; SimpleClosure only takes a percentage if the assets are sold or licensed. Its FAQ adds that companies winding down may sell or license assets to clear their liability (SimpleClosure).

AssetHub has handled over 150 deals and expects to return over $10 million to startups by the end of 2026, and 47% of SimpleClosure deals now include code or data sales, MIT Technology Review reported. Not every archive sells: at launch it reported a 20%+ success rate for source code sales across nearly 100 participating companies (Business Wire).

Sunset offers to license a client's operating data to frontier AI labs after it is de-identified, or to sell, assign and auction the remaining assets and IP, with proceeds covering the wind-down or going back to investors (Sunset). Compare both with other routes in SimpleClosure alternatives for selling startup data.

Source: SimpleClosure: AssetHub

Other buyers that approach closed companies

• Mercor emailed an AI agent startup's CEO eight days after its acquisition, offering to buy or license its code and task records (AI Weekly, citing The Information). Its own FAQ says it covers all costs of extraction, anonymization and transfer, and pays by wire typically within 2 to 4 weeks of the signed agreement (Mercor). See the Mercor program guide.
• Surge AI buys data to build reinforcement-learning environments where AI agents practice tasks such as debugging a complex IT architecture or drafting appellate briefs (MIT Technology Review).
• CTD Commons, an effort funded by an OpenAI Foundation grant, buys regulatory dossiers from failed biotech companies (Trove).
• SpaceXAI has held internal discussions about buying customer and operational records from troubled or bankrupt startups, Bloomberg reported in September 2026 (Trove).

What closed companies' records have sold for

Published sales are few, and the amounts are as reported. Most are startups; the largest came from an airline in bankruptcy.

• Court approval of the airline sale was still pending. The consumer privacy ombudsman recommended approval on October 5, 2026, after structured passenger databases were pulled out of the sale, and the hearing was adjourned to November 6, 2026 (Chapter 11 Cases).
• Unions representing flight attendants and pilots objected, citing the personal information of former employees in the data (Chapter 11 Cases; Fortune). The deals tracker records the outcome as reported.

Source: Chapter 11 Cases: Spirit data sale hearing moves to November (Oct 2026)

Who can sign for a closed company?

A buyer will ask who has authority to license the records. The answer depends on how far the closing has gone, and in a formal insolvency it is no longer the founders. In a formal bankruptcy the trustee or debtor in possession decides; see business bankruptcy and company data.

• Follow the closing checklist for where the company is registered: the US, the UK, Canada, Australia or India.
• If the company cannot pay its debts, read selling company data in an ABC before agreeing anything.

Source: Mayer Brown: ABC, assignments for the benefit of creditors (Feb 2023)

What records qualify, and how much history buyers want

Buyers want the working history of how a company ran, not a product to relaunch. Turing groups it as how the team communicated, how the work got built, how the business ran and how decisions were made (Lazarus). In practice that means these systems:

• Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 mail and documents.
• Work history: Jira or Linear tickets, GitHub or GitLab code and reviews, Figma files.
• Knowledge: Confluence and Notion wikis, runbooks and schemas.
• Customers and revenue: Salesforce or HubSpot CRM records, Zendesk or Intercom support tickets.
• Size and age: micro1's defunct track lists 30+ employees, and Handshake AI looks for "20+ full time employees & 3+ years in operation" (Handshake AI). Sunset values assets by head count, years in operation, data volume and how the team used its tools (MIT Technology Review).
• Variety: Surge AI's RL-environment lead told MIT Technology Review he looks for archives reflecting a range of situations, from disagreements to tricky judgment calls.
• What usually stays out: suppliers scrub personally identifiable information and exclude HR records (MIT Technology Review). See how to de-identify company data, selling Slack and email archives and selling source code.

Source: Turing: Project Lazarus

Company wind-down: before you delete company systems

Most shutdown plans end by cancelling subscriptions, and that deletes the record with them. Turing warns that chat and CRM history can disappear within weeks of shutting off, and that a wound-down company can still sell if it kept exports or still has admin access (Lazarus).

Check the value before anything is cancelled: see what the company's records are worth from six questions about the business, with no files.

• Keep at least one admin account on every system until the records are exported or a buyer has taken delivery.
• Check what an export includes. Slack's Free and Pro plans export messages and file links from public channels only. Exporting private channels and direct messages needs a Business+ or Enterprise plan and an application by the workspace owner, and Free workspaces can only export links to files from the last 90 days (Slack).
• Keep what the law requires first. In the US, employment tax records must be kept at least 4 years, and creditors or insurers may require longer (IRS). The US closing checklist has the full retention table.
• Write down what you hold: systems, years covered, headcount and approximate volume. The data inventory template gives the columns.

Source: Turing: Project Lazarus

How to sell a closed company's data, step by step

Source: MIT Technology Review: AI labs buying data from dead startups (Oct 2026)

How Origin helps a closing company

Origin Data Partners is an independent data partner that helps companies get their data bought. For a closing company we describe the record at company level, compare the programs above and other buyers on price, exclusivity, preparation and payment timing, and work with whoever has authority to sign: the founders, the board, or a trustee, liquidator or assignee. No files or system credentials are needed to begin.

Origin helped place a company-record licensing deal for a closed startup that received $1.3 million (companies winding down). A buyer may pay Origin when a deal closes.

Next step

Before any system is cancelled, write down who can sign and what the company holds: systems, years and approximate volume. No export is needed to find out what the records are worth. For the code-and-records question in a software shutdown, see selling company data after closing.

Origin Data Partners works with companies that own data and helps get it bought. We are independent of the services on this page, and a buyer may pay us when a deal closes (how Origin is paid). See what your data is worth.