Google buys a dead airline's data for $10 million, but here's what it's not getting
Google has acquired the internal business data of the bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million to train its AI models. The company emphasized that the dataset will be scrubbed of personally identifiable information and does not include customer records.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing trend of tech giants purchasing massive, non-traditional datasets to fuel the development of large language models.
Google has bought the leftovers of Spirit Airlines, winning a bankruptcy auction for the dead carrier's internal business data with a $10 million bid that it says will feed product development and AI model training. The sale still needs sign-off, with a hearing set for August 19 before Judge Sean Lane in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.The company was quick to spell out what it had not bought. A spokesperson told Business Insider the company was buying internal data and custom software, "but we are not buying their customer or credit card information." Google added that anything it receives will be "rigorously scrubbed of any personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt."What is inside the Spirit Airlines dataset Google just boughtThe haul is enormous.
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