Home / Market log
Market log
What has changed in the market for company records sold to AI, newest first. Every entry is dated and links to a third-party source: press, wires, filings or court records.
-
Above the Law criticises Mode’s programme for law firmsCriticism
Above the Law argued that paying law firms for their email and documents asks them to sell privileged client communications, and that removing names does not remove privilege, which belongs to the client. It reports the programme takes firms with at least six employees and pays referrers the greater of $50,000 or 6% of a firm’s payment.
Source: Above the Law, “Tech Company Launches Program To Pay Law Firms For Their Emails, Privilege Be Damned” (read 2026-10-18)
-
Mode.Inc launches BizBuyData, a $5 billion data-licensing initiativeLaunch
Mode.Inc announced a $5 billion “enterprise data monetization initiative”, under the name BizBuyData, to help businesses and nonprofits license their data to AI companies. The $5 billion is the headline of Mode’s own press release, not money paid out.
Source: Business Wire, “Mode.Inc Launches $5 Billion Enterprise Data Monetization Initiative to Help Businesses, Nonprofits License Data to Leading AI Companies” (headline; the release page blocks automated reading) (read 2026-10-18)
-
MIT Technology Review: AI labs are buying dead startups’ dataPress
MIT Technology Review reported that foundation labs, vendors that build simulated workplaces and big tech companies buy the code, email, chat and documents of shut-down startups. SimpleClosure, a wind-down service, said it had handled more than 150 deals, that code or data now appears in 47% of them, and that it expects to return more than $10 million to startups by the end of 2026.
Source: MIT Technology Review, “AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models” (read 2026-10-18)
-
micro1 commits $1 billion to licensing company dataLaunch
micro1 said it will spend $1 billion over the next 12 months buying and licensing operational data from companies, to build training environments for AI agents, with capital from Citi and Hercules Capital.
Source: The Next Web, “micro1 commits $1bn to buy company data for training AI agents” (read 2026-10-18)
-
Forbes: shut-down startups sell old Slack chats and email to AI companiesPress
Forbes reported that companies are selling their old Slack messages, email and Jira tickets to AI companies. One, the transcription company Cielo24, sold 13 years of them for “hundreds of thousands” of dollars.
Sources: Slashdot summary of the Forbes report (Forbes is paywalled) (read 2026-10-17) · Forbes, “AI’s new training data: your old work Slacks and emails”
We add an entry only when we can source it. Prices mentioned here also appear on the price index. Spotted something we missed? Write to partners@quietasset.com.