Data Monetization Companies: 71 Buyers, Marketplaces and Brokers Compared (2026)
Data monetization companies pay businesses for the data their operations already produce. In 2026 most of that money comes from AI training, and the buyers fall into six types: AI data vendors, marketplaces, wind-down buyers, AI labs, brokers and big tech. Below is every one we have found, with what each buys, what it pays and what to watch for.
Who buys company data for AI training? 35 of the 71 companies buy or license it themselves: 24 AI data vendors such as micro1, Handshake AI, Mercor and Scale AI; 8 AI labs including Google, OpenAI and Meta, several of which are named, mostly in press reports, as customers of those vendors; and 3 wind-down buyers: SimpleClosure, Sunset and Hilco Global. The other 36 connect sellers to buyers: 16 marketplaces, 19 brokers and Cloudflare.
How much do data monetization companies pay? $10K–$100K for a closing startup’s archive, $100K–$4M per license for an operating company with 20–500 staff, and $7.5M–$12.5M in court-filed bids for Spirit Airlines’ records.
What company data do they buy? Team chat, email, CRM history, support tickets, codebases, documents, call recordings and finance exports. Media marketplaces also buy video, audio and images.
Is it legal to sell company data to AI companies? Usually, if you hold the right to license it: check employee notices, customer and vendor contracts and software terms, remove personal data with de-identification you can verify, and keep HR, health and client-held data out. Not legal advice.
What should you check before signing? Who de-identifies the data and when, whether the license is perpetual or exclusive, when you get paid, and whether the end buyer is disclosed. Most vendors resell to labs at a markup.
How do you sell company data? License it to a vendor, list it on a marketplace, use a wind-down buyer if you are closing, or have a broker run a competitive bid. Bright Info is a sell-side broker on the list: it invites these buyers to bid in sealed rounds and negotiates the license on your side.
All 71 data monetization companies compared
Disclosure. Bright Info compiled this list and appears in it as a sell-side broker. We never buy data and never take a position in it. We are paid a commission by the buyer the owner chooses, from the closed deal, and the commission is the same whichever buyer wins, so we have no stake in which company on this page you pick. "Watch for" notes come from public reporting, not our own claims. Listing is not endorsement, and nothing here is legal advice; your counsel reviews every license before signature.
Showing 71 of 71 companies
71 data monetization companies: type, what they buy, typical price, deal terms and what to watch for, as of November 2026
Internal communications, SOPs, project histories, CRM, support tickets and other business documentation
$100K–$500K, $500K–$2M or $2M+, by published tier
License, not a sale; non-exclusive; you keep ownership; you invoice after micro1 approves the data (it has 30 days to review) and are paid within 30 days of invoicing
Spirit Airlines privacy ombudsman wants to review micro1's plan to de-identify the data itself rather than use an independent party (reported); Its data-estimate page gives payments 'typically ranging from $150K to over $2M' next to a lowest tier of $100K–$500K
Slack, email, docs/wiki, finance/ERP, design/CAD, HR/payroll, field service and project management records; documentation, workflows and project history
$100K–$4M+
Data license; 20+ full-time employees and 3+ years in operation; data scoped upfront, protected under NDA and de-identified before use
Slack/Teams, email, docs/wiki, CRM, code and Drive
Not published
License; Mercor covers extraction, anonymization and transfer costs; wire on delivery of the anonymized dataset to the buyer, typically 2–4 weeks after signing
March 2026 security incident via the LiteLLM supply-chain attack (confirmed by Mercor); Class actions over an alleged data breach filed in California federal court in April 2026 (reported); Spirit Airlines privacy ombudsman wants to examine the incident if the court considers Mercor instead of Google (reported)
$10K–$1M+ illustrative value per data partnership, scaling with cadence
Continuous partnership, not a one-time file transfer, designed with opportunity for recurring revenue; Scale anonymizes inside your environment before extraction
Meta to take a reported 49% stake in Scale, with founder Alexandr Wang to help lead a new AI research lab at Meta (June 2025, reported)
Slack/Teams, Drive/SharePoint, email, CRM, support tickets, design files, call recordings and finance/ERP
$100K to $2M and above (typical deals)
License to defined operational data for a defined term; exclusive by default unless agreed otherwise (case studies describe a perpetual exclusive license); offer within 1–2 weeks; net 30–60 once the data is approved, anonymized and delivered; no fee or commission
Slack/Teams, email, CRM, support tickets, ERP records, docs/drives, CAD and code
$100K–$4M target licensing opportunities, subject to data review and agreed terms
License; you keep your original files and ownership; exclusivity only if explicitly agreed; payment milestones set in the signed agreement; 20+ employees (referral page), or more than 30 employees and at least three years in business (referral partner page)
Recently registered domain: telegraphlab.com registered Aug 30, 2026 (reported)
Up to $1M; closed deals to date from $20K to several hundred thousand dollars (company figures)
License for training only; anonymized dataset retained for the licence term; raw archive deleted within 30 days of delivery, confirmed in writing; payment timing published only as 'We pay fast'
Operational documentation, decision and escalation records, and systems of record
Not published
Defined licence for a defined use, no ownership transfer; quoted individually per partnership; paid on acceptance, not submission; no seller costs (Appen covers extraction, anonymisation, preparation and transfer)
Chat, email, tickets, docs/wiki, CRM, support history, databases and code
Not published (revenue share, no fixed price)
Non-exclusive license; Turing is the only seller for the first 90 days after signing, then you can renew or opt out; you keep ownership; paid a revenue share from each sale
Company data archives, for RL environments ('reinforcement-learning gyms') where clients' AI agents practice tasks (reported)
Not published
Not published
None found
AfterQueryActive (Data Partnerships announced Oct 23, 2026)
Data vendor
Email, chat, tickets, CRM, support, finance, industry systems and legacy tools; also code, financial models and CAD designs; for training and evaluating frontier AI and RL environments
Not published
License; you set the scope (teams, systems, time window); terms proposed after sample review; payment followed by an 'ongoing partnership'
Internal documentation, SOPs and playbooks, knowledge bases, process documentation, project management workflows, internal communications, CRM and workflow metadata and task execution histories; industry systems for manufacturing, restaurants, healthcare, home services, law firms and retail
Not published (calculator gives an indicative estimate only; final payout set by data sources, volume, quality, access terms and due diligence)
Contractual; data de-identified before use and the company never named; you keep ownership of the underlying data; originals deleted after processing; for companies with 30 to 200 employees
Anonymous operator: no company name, address or terms on the site; domain registrant data redacted by a privacy service; Recently registered domain: actualdata.ai registered 2026-09-30
Email; calendar; Slack/Teams; docs/wiki (Word, Docs, Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion); project management (Jira, Asana); CRM; support tickets; finance/ERP; HR/people systems (e.g., Workday); data warehouses; health records (claims and revenue-cycle work, care coordination, de-identified clinical documentation)
Not published
License (you never hand the data over); one-time sale, after which most partners move to an optional quarterly refresh that becomes a recurring line; paid on acceptance rather than submission; no seller fees
Internal knowledge (SOPs, manuals, project histories, QA processes, technical documentation, playbooks); CRM, finance, support, logistics, project, commerce and other operating platforms; records of real business decisions
Not published (every opportunity evaluated individually)
Buys some datasets directly and places others with buyers in its private network; any acquisition, license or transfer is governed by a separate signed agreement; you own the original data and only an approved copy is prepared
Company data and workflows (unspecified); private-equity deal documents (anonymized documents from actual PE transactions used in its Westworld Finance Diligence Bench; how they were obtained is not stated)
Email, calendar, docs/wiki, Slack/Teams, call recordings, CRM and finance/ERP
Company data could be worth $100K–$5M; calculator estimate is illustrative only
Mode buys the agreed, filtered copy directly; the agreement defines its scope and any exclusivity; amount and payment schedule set in the written agreement before export; no broker fee
Finance/ERP, CRM, HR, support tickets, scheduling/project management, Slack/Teams, email, calendar and docs/wiki
Partnerships commonly worth $100K or more; six-figure payouts; will beat a qualifying written offer for the same eligible dataset, licensing rights, payment conditions and required work
Paid under a licensing agreement whose scope, rights and acceptance criteria are agreed up front, after the dataset is delivered and accepted; use limited to model training and evaluation
Email archives, order and project files, quotes and costings, scanned folders; support tickets, CRM, inspection and maintenance records, order and stock system exports, complaints and credit notes; CAD/technical drawings, change requests, commissioning records
Not published
One-off price or a share of TGDC's licensing revenue; payment follows agreed milestones; you decide in writing who may receive the results
Code and workspace data: communications, documents, designs, tickets and workflows (Slack, Google Drive, email, Notion, Figma)
Deals facilitated in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for unique assets; enterprise asset sales reaching into the millions (company figures)
License (you keep the underlying assets) or outright sale; no upfront cost; takes a percentage only if assets are sold or licensed; multi-pass de-identification before data is made available
Terms let SimpleClosure or its affiliates acquire submitted assets and later resell or license them without further compensation to you, except as set out in a separate agreement; You warrant you have given all required notices to, and obtained all required consents from, individuals whose personal information may be in the assets, including employees and customers; Founders in wind-down data sales have little visibility into who buys the data (reported)
Similar to SimpleClosure's prices, which Forbes said typically ran $10K–$100K per company (reported, Apr 2026)
Not published
Runs a data resale business and values its wind-down clients' assets for it (reported); Founders in wind-down data sales have little visibility into who buys the data (reported)
Slack/Teams, email, code, docs/wiki, CRM, finance/ERP and support tickets; also datasets and RL environments
Not published
Licence, not a sale of rights; you approve a one-page Deal Schedule for each sale; paid your share within 30 days of each lab payment, with a statement; nothing up front
Code and enterprise software codebases, tasksets, RL environments, raw data (documents, logs, enterprise records such as emails or org charts), and cybersecurity, legal and finance data
Production-grade codebases have licensed for up to $20,000 each; opportunities usually around $500–$1,500 per task; vendors set their own prices
A sale licenses the assets for a commercial use; buyers buy the whole listing or offer their own price; no refunds; earnings available once the buyer's payment is credited; 20% platform fee when you withdraw ($1,000 minimum)
Video, audio, text, gaming and robotics data; business data: Slack/Teams, email, docs/wiki, tickets and sprints, CRM, finance/ERP and code
Business data: typical full-company deals start at six figures; video footage typically $0.75–$3 a minute (reported, 2025)
Licence on your behalf under terms you sign off on; ownership never transfers; no fees; no fixed payout schedule: paid only after the client pays, up to 4–5 months from delivery to payout
Payout totals differ across its own pages: '$50M+ paid to creators globally' (content-owners page) vs '$20M+ paid to licensors' (business-data page)
Dataset deals: your share of participating content × 50% of what Wirestock receives (Method 1); all submitted content enters the Dataset Deals Program with no opt-out; non-exclusive, sublicensable licence that survives termination; monthly payments (Fixed Payment projects paid instantly after approval)
Creator payout totals differ across its own pages: '$6M+ paid to creators' (About page) vs '$10M+ creator payouts' (sell-your-content page)
Email, Slack/Teams, docs/wiki, CRM, finance/ERP and support tickets
Up to $5M+, a possible license ceiling (estimates are not offers)
License under agreed terms, not a sale; exclusivity set per agreement and data can sometimes be licensed more than once; you keep ownership and approve what leaves the business; commission not published
Recently registered domain: bdlg.ai registered 2026-08-27; Domain registrant details withheld by a privacy service
Operational metrics, sales and revenue data, workforce analytics, product usage telemetry, customer journey data (including support patterns) and AI and automation metrics
Not published (seller sets own price and keeps 80% of each sale)
Licence on terms the seller chooses, with an 80/20 revenue split (seller keeps 80%); free to list; anonymization runs in the seller's browser and raw data never leaves it
Operator not identified: the home page names no legal entity, address, terms of service or privacy policy; the footer gives only 'A Lumenous.ai Company' and a copyright line; Domain registrant is privacy-proxied (Registration Private / Domains By Proxy, LLC); domain registered 2024-05-15 via GoDaddy
Up to six figures (homepage); $100k+ / $500k+ / $1M+ tiers (data-partnerships page)
Compensation, permitted uses and data handling agreed before your team prepares the approved records; duration and scope of rights set in the agreement; you keep ownership; payment stated as 'get paid in 7 days' (vertical landing pages) and 'get paid for your first data asset today' (homepage)
The company's own pages give different figures: 'up to six figures' (homepage) vs a '$1M+' tier (data-partnerships page); Own pages describe the model differently: a marketplace where labs buy listings (homepage) vs 'the fastest moving data buyer' (vertical pages)
CSV, audio, images, documents, code and geospatial data
Its geospatial page lists ranges such as $5–$25 per sq km (high-resolution satellite imagery) and $500–$5,000 per city (3D building and terrain models); the same page says FileYield cannot determine a reliable price
Data transfer, the legal contract and payment occur directly between seller and buyer; listing is free; FileYield does not process payments or hold escrow
Recently registered domain: fileyield.com registered 2025-12-04; Contradictory self-description on its About page: titled 'the Brokered Data Marketplace' while the same page says 'Not a marketplace. Not a platform.'; Contradictory statements on valuation: About page offers to tell sellers what data is worth, while the same page says FileYield does not determine a reliable sale price; Its own Terms of Service say they are a draft not reviewed by legal counsel
CRM, project-management records, collaboration data, customer communications, business documents, workforce intelligence, operational data, technical assets; text, images, audio, video, code, agentic trajectories, 3D spatial, tabular, time-series, human feedback and synthetic data
Not published
Two modes: self-serve sales under the licence you select, and brokered transactions that need your written confirmation per deal; commission is owed on deals for relevant data made outside Opendatabay with buyers it introduced, within 24 months of their last purchase there (or 12 months of introduction if no purchase)
Health records and healthcare operational data (clinical notes, structured data, PDF documents, DICOM imaging), including clinical judgment and approved billing appeals
Medical facilities have been paid $300,000 to $3,000,000; $943,000 paid to a single healthcare customer; figures describe representative or potential outcomes, not a forecast
Licensing under a separate signed agreement; you approve every deal, set the terms and can change terms or revoke access at any time; cash upfront, royalties or both; appraisal is free
The site names no legal entity, address, email or phone; its privacy policy and terms say the quickest route to the company is to book an appraisal call; Domain registrant hidden behind a privacy service (Domains By Proxy, LLC); Domain shfa.ai registered 2025-05-29; Referral conflict of interest: referrer gets 5% of the referred party's deal, and the intake form does not disclose the 5% to the referred party
ShutterstockActive; Getty Images delivered notice terminating the Getty–Shutterstock merger agreement (reported July 7, 2026)
Marketplace
Images, video, 3D models and music
Not published
Pooled revenue-share fund (Contributor Fund): contributors earn a 20% average royalty rate on Shutterstock's data-licensing revenue, shared by the volume of their content and metadata in purchased datasets
FTC matter settled: Shutterstock to pay $35 million to the FTC and change its subscription enrollment and cancellation practices (8-K, May 14, 2026)
CEO says the standard rate to license video for AI training is about $1 per minute; specialized scenes can go for up to $30 per 30-second clip (reported)
Licensing of datasets from rights holders to AI companies
CRM, finance/ERP, project management, docs/wiki and cloud storage, support tickets, Slack/Teams, email, meeting transcripts, data warehouses, industry-specific systems and code
License of defined, limited rights; you keep ownership; exclusivity and duration negotiated; any engagement, referral fee or license agreed separately in writing
Domain miroadvisory.com registered 2026-04-06 (registry RDAP record); Terms identify the operator as Miro Advisory LLC with a single contact address (mike@miroadvisory.com); no named principals or street address on the terms page
Support tickets, chat threads, CRM and sales activity, SOPs and internal documentation, knowledge bases, QA records, project histories and accounting exports
$100,000 to $2 million USD (the site's stated range for what labs pay; its FAQ adds that buyers who mention a typical deal put it around $200,000 to $300,000 USD)
License for a fee, for a fixed term, with or without lab exclusivity
Domain aitrainingdatabroker.com registered 2026-10-10 (registry RDAP record); Says it represents the seller, while its broker fee is paid by the buying AI lab and it also sources data for buying labs
Slack/Teams, email, CRM, support tickets, call recordings, code, docs/wiki, finance/ERP, project trackers, engineering and CAD files, deal records and life sciences research
$100K–$2M (typical license)
Direct license: Allied arranges it and does not buy the data; you license to the AI lab, which pays by wire 30 to 60 days after accepting delivery; non-exclusive by default; resale barred; a competing-bids option has the buyer pay you directly; 30+ office employees and more than a year in business (direct license)
Recently registered domain: alliedassets.ai was registered on 2026-10-18; Domain registrant name and organization are redacted in the registry record; The privacy policy directs requests to access, correct or delete information to the address in any email Allied sends
CAD and BIM drawings and models, project records, real estate and title transactions, CAM files, work orders, quality and inspection records, tickets, dispatch and bookings, email, loan files, ledgers and financial models, code, game and simulation assets and robot sensor logs
Not published (online estimate is a rough range, not an offer)
You license directly to the buyer, non-exclusively, and Arloh brings back offers (its privacy policy instead refers to data licensed to Arloh under a written agreement); payout is the final step, after licensing and export
Email threads, support tickets, call recordings, contracts, customer and job records, invoices, internal chat; code; Slack/Teams, docs/wiki and project management
Placements ranged from $100K to $2M (homepage)
Seller signs directly with the data partnership program, which pays the seller directly
Domain cognorlabs.com registered 2026-09-16 (registry RDAP record); Terms of use name the operator only as "Cognor Labs" (no legal entity or address), with Wyoming governing law and contact support@cognorlabs.com
Email, CRM, Slack/Teams, support tickets, documents, CAD/design files and audio
Estimates based on ~$10,000 per desk-based employee, qualifying offers from $150,000; $150K to $3M (illustrative, Terms of Service); up to $10,000 per employee (home page headline)
Licence for AI training only and you keep ownership (home page); its terms describe connecting owners with buyers interested in licensing or purchasing data; paid typically 30–45 days after accepting an offer; 20+ employees and 3+ years in business
Domain data-mine.co registered 2026-10-18 (registry RDAP record); Registrant name is blank and marked redacted for privacy in the registry record; the only registrant location shown is Arizona, US; Operator identified only as "DataMine": no legal entity, street address or named people appear on the home, privacy or terms pages; the only contact is support@data-mine.co; Discloses that it may receive a referral fee, commission or other compensation from buyers or partners in connection with transactions arranged through the Site
Email, Slack/Teams, CRM, support tickets, project and task records, docs/wiki, finance/ERP and call logs and transcripts
$100K–$5M (partner-reported and public figures); no offer or payment is guaranteed
License, not a sale; you keep ownership; agreement and payment directly between you and the buyer; labs bid on a data manifest; flat 20% success fee, only if a deal closes; 90-day term
Recently registered domain: datasupply.ai registered 2026-09-24, registrant details withheld by a privacy service; Possible conflict of interest: its technology-company guide says 'We may be compensated by a buyer if an introduction becomes a partnership'; Contradictory statements on its own pages (offer guarantee): owners page advertises a '3 Offer Minimum' (timing and number vary), while the homepage says no offer or payment is guaranteed
Operational workflows, SOPs, tickets, records and internal communications
Up to $4M
Seller signs, Endless prepares and transfers the data and the seller is paid; Endless then licenses the data on to the labs
Domain endless-data.com registered 2026-09-28 (registry RDAP record); Contradictory terms on own pages: the privacy policy says Endless sells personal data in its Data Products, while the seller-facing homepage says customer, employee and client personal data is never licensed
Slack/Teams, Google Chat, email, CRM, support tickets, docs/wiki, approved call recordings (transcripts), finance/ERP, design and project files, contracts and forms
Not published (on-page calculator gives an illustrative ballpark, not an offer)
Licence of a copy of the data for agreed purposes; buyers don't take ownership; paid within 30 days of a vetted AI lab buying the listing, or as set out in your agreement; any costs set out before you commit
Recently registered domain: goldmined.ai registered 2026-10-08; Anonymous operator: the domain registrant is shown as 'Privacy Administrator', Anonymize LLC; the registrar is Epik LLC; An intake-quiz variant at /check-b/ ends with a 'Best matched buyer' screen that tells sellers to 'Connect with them directly', with a 'Connect with micro1 →' button linking to micro1's company registration page with a referral code
Email, files, tickets, CRM notes, books and project boards
Observational ranges, not a quote: $100K–$250K (specialized histories), $250K–$750K (deep multi-year sets), $1M+ (rare and differentiated); most businesses will not qualify
The license can recur: the historical corpus first, then incremental corpora, then refresh fees
License of a de-identified copy under a written agreement, no sale or ownership transfer; the buyer can't sell, publish or share the files; wire after you accept and the export is delivered, 2 to 3 weeks from form to wire; nothing up front and nothing if the deal does not close; 20+ employees and 3 years in business
Recently registered domain: licenseyourdata.com registered 2026-09-04; Contradictory terms: the home page says that if a company passes its five checks and it takes the deal to a lab, any bid it brings back will be at least $50,000 (guaranteed), while its Terms of Service say it does not guarantee any offer or amount
Slack messages, email, Google Drive files, spreadsheets, CRM activity, support tickets, design files, call recordings and accounting or ERP exports
$100K to $2M+
Term depends on contract (one-time, fixed period or several years); payment typically 30–60 days after data is reviewed, approved, shared and anonymized; any commission or success fee disclosed before you commit
Domain licensedata.io registered 2026-10-18 (registry RDAP record); The "Get started" button is a link marked rel="sponsored" to micro1's company registration page carrying a referralCode; The home and partners pages identify the operator only as "LicenseData.io": no legal entity, address, named people or contact email
Deals published in 2026 ran from about $110,000 to $1.2 million; some firms receive less or no offer (reported)
The licensing partner makes the offer, signs the license with the seller and pays the seller
Domain pewterdata.com registered 2026-10-10 (registry RDAP record); Pewter says that because the licensing partner pays its fee, it is not the seller's lawyer or agent
Email, docs/wiki, Slack/Teams, call recordings, CRM, support tickets, finance/ERP and code
$100K to $5M; typical deal size $210K–$420K (indicative, firm with 25 office staff and 5 years of records)
A licensed copy, never ownership, for AI research and model training; paid once the AI lab accepts the data, typically net 30; no seller fees; the buyer pays a finder's fee when a deal closes (amount not published)
Recently registered domain: renaissancedatalabs.com registered 2026-10-06; Domain registrant details withheld by a privacy service; Contradictory terms: the site speaks of '+1,000 more systems we can buy from', while the same site says 'We never touch your files' and that it makes the introduction and manages the deal, with exports and de-identification run through the buyer's secure process; The privacy policy lists 'License Your Data, our partner' among those it shares information with when the eligibility check is submitted; Privacy policy says site visitors are identified via RB2B (company, and where possible name, business email and LinkedIn profile)
Slack/Teams, email, CRM, docs/wiki, support tickets, finance/ERP and industry systems (TMS, WMS, EHR, PSA)
Not published (no quote from a schedule; an estimate only after someone has looked at the systems)
Licence, exclusive or non-exclusive, priced by competing offers; you keep your source records; fee paid from the transaction proceeds when a deal closes (percentage not published); 20+ employees, United States
Recently registered domain: rhodelabs.ai registered 2026-03-31; registrant name and organisation redacted (country US); Operator legal entity not named: the privacy policy identifies the operator only as "Rhode Labs" with no entity, address or principals
Team chat, deals and CRM, support tickets, invoices and ledgers, docs and contracts, projects; datasets and AI training environments
Illustrative example: $289K–$546K for 50 people, 10 years, 3 systems, US (not a buyer offer)
Licence, not sale; agreement sets how buyers use and keep records
Domain sellmycompanydata.com registered 2026-10-07 (registry RDAP record); Terms page gives only an email contact (hello@sellmycompanydata.com); no legal entity, address or named people on the home or terms pages
CAD: 3D models and assemblies, technical drawings and building models; manufacturing files (DXF/CNC), bills of materials and design history
Up to $2,000,000, stated as a ceiling, not a typical amount; offers depend on volume, complexity, quality and exclusivity of the files
Not published
Domain supersoniq.site registered 2026-10-11 (registry RDAP record); The homepage identifies the operator only as "SupersonIQ": no legal entity, address, people or contact email in the visible page text
Email, chat, support tickets, CRM history, documents, CAD/design files, code, engineering records, media archives, call recordings or transcripts, quotes and proposals, work orders and field reports, SOPs and inspection photos
$100K–$2M (potential deals, not a guaranteed payout)
The partner's contract sets the rights, agreed directly with the partner; its terms say Ventra licenses or acquires business data and licenses or sells it on to buyers, directly or as an intermediary; usually net 30 or net 60 after signing; no fee currently charged; 30+ full-time employees, 3+ years, US, UK or Canada
Recently registered domain: joinventra.com registered 2026-09-26; Terms disclaim responsibility for buyers’ use, security or training on seller data; Own pages differ on who explains how personal data is handled: the landing page says the Ventra team walks you through it; the company-data FAQ says the buyer or data partner explains its own process
Business records such as email, Slack/Teams, revenue, aircraft operations and audit records (Spirit Airlines data, reported); docs/wiki and code (reported); publisher content; closed and offline datasets
$10.0M for Spirit's de-identified data (successful bid, Aug 14, 2026 auction; reported); $60M per year for Reddit content (reported, 2024)
Spirit: sale of de-identified data under a bill of sale; Google bears the cost of the de-identification agent, described as an independent party selected by the debtors; certified de-identification is a closing condition. Code pilot: non-exclusive license, developer keeps IP (reported)
Spirit data sale hearing adjourned five times, most recently to Nov 6, 2026 (as of Oct 2026); Six objections and joinders against the Spirit sale filed Aug 18–Sep 4, 2026; 119 members of Congress urged Spirit and Google to protect former employees' data
Long-form writing, conversations, images, audio and video (Data Partnerships); publisher content
News Corp deal could be worth more than $250M over five years (reported by WSJ); at least $16M per year from Dotdash Meredith, fixed component only (reported)
Not published
The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement (2023)
Up to $50M per year (News Corp, per WSJ; reported)
News Corp: at least three years; fresh reporting for Meta AI users plus training on additional material, including archives (reported)
Invested in Scale AI, reportedly taking a 49% stake for $14.3 billion (June 2025); Publishers say Meta's new business terms let it crawl their websites; after an outcry Meta dropped the word 'train' and pushed the start date from Oct 30 to Nov 20, 2026 (reported)
Datasets from commercial agreements with third-party businesses, non-public data from third parties, and data from data-labeling services and paid contractors; RL environments, including from Mechanize (reported)
Not published
Not published
$1.5B Bartz v. Anthropic class settlement over acquiring and copying pirated books; final approval July 20, 2026
Multi-year license with The New York Times (May 2025); display of summaries and excerpts in products such as Alexa, and training of Amazon's proprietary foundation models
Nonfiction backlist books (HarperCollins, reported); publisher content via the Publisher Content Marketplace (pay-per-use, Copilot grounding)
$5,000 per nonfiction title, split evenly between author and HarperCollins (reported)
HarperCollins: three-year license; outputs limited to 200 consecutive words and/or 5% of a book's text (reported). PCM: voluntary, publisher-defined license terms; publishers paid on delivered value
The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement (2023)
At least $50M, multiyear (offers to news publishers, reported Dec 2023); a possible nine-figure budget discussed for paying publishers when their content is used (proposed Siri AI deals, reported Aug 2026)
Content license, with multiyear licenses of news archives proposed; the proposed Siri deals would pay publishers variable compensation when their content is used (reported)
Proposed class action by authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson accusing Apple of using the Books3 dataset of pirated books for its OpenELM models (reported, Sep 2025); Class action filed October 9 in N.D. Cal. alleging Apple used pirated books to train Apple Intelligence, OpenELM and Foundation Models (reported, Oct 2025)
Text, images, video, audio; translation memories; exam/reasoning items; competitive-programming problems and solutions; speech; agentic task, tool-use and dialogue datasets
Not published
Not published
Lawsuit: Nazemian et al. v. NVIDIA Corporation, No. 4:24-cv-01454 (N.D. Cal.), authors' proposed class action alleging use of their copyrighted works to train NeMo Megatron and other LLMs; court denied NVIDIA's motion to dismiss in part (per plaintiffs' law firm, May 2026) (reported); Allegation in amended complaint (reported Jan 2026): a member of NVIDIA's data strategy team contacted Anna's Archive, and NVIDIA sought to find out what 'high-speed access' to its data would look like; the complaint does not say whether NVIDIA paid. Anna's Archive later said on Reddit it never dealt with NVIDIA directly. (reported); Report (Proof News, Aug 2024): according to company Slack and internal documents, NVIDIA staff gathered YouTube videos for a new video model by downloading datasets of previously scraped videos and scraping their own; NVIDIA said it is confident its models and research comply with copyright law (reported)
Publisher and web content, via Pay Per Crawl and Pay Per Use (beta)
Minimum $0.001 per crawl; dynamic pricing via an origin 'crawler-price' header or a Worker; under Pay Per Use (beta) each AI company sets the price for the use it pays for
Charged per successful content retrieval by an AI crawler; Cloudflare charges the crawler and pays publishers monthly, subject to settlement periods and minimum payout thresholds; named deals: Ceramic's pay-per-query model and You.com agents paying on demand for premium content
None found
No companies match these filters.
Prices are as published by each company or reported in the press as of November 2026; ranges marked "reported" come from third-party sources and may differ from what a buyer offers you. "Watch for" notes come from public reporting, not our own claims. Company names link to each company’s buyer profile, which cites a source for every figure. Listing is not endorsement. See sources and methodology.
What is a data monetization company?
A data monetization company pays a business for data that business already holds, or helps it license that data to someone who will. In 2026 the buyers are mostly AI developers. Labs training models and agents need real records of how work gets done, so they pay for team chat, email archives, CRM history, support tickets, code with its tickets and documents, call recordings and finance exports. One label covers companies with very different roles: some buy outright, some resell to labs at a markup, some run a marketplace, and a few work for the seller.
This page lists every company we have found that buys, licenses, brokers or resells business data for AI training. It leaves out consumer data brokers, ad-tech audience sellers and analytics vendors that help you use your own data internally. Those are a different market that happens to share the name. For the price ranges and the sources behind them, see what company data sells for and our sources and methodology.
The six types of data monetization companies
The type filter above uses the same six groups. Each one buys differently, pays differently and carries a different risk.
1. AI data vendors (24)
Vendors such as micro1, Handshake AI, Mercor, Polyshares, Telegraph Lab and Ooak Data license an operating company’s records and supply them to AI labs. Between them they buy chat, email, CRM, ticket and document history, and their published ranges run from $10K at the low end (Scale AI, Replay) to $4M+ (Handshake AI) and $5M (Mode). Most de-identify the data themselves: Scale AI does it inside your environment before extraction, while micro1 and Collinear AI do it after transfer. Polyshares and Labelbox license exclusively by default, and Polyshares’ case studies describe a perpetual exclusive license. Scale AI, Appen, Turing and Surge AI also buy company data: Scale AI, Appen and Turing through their own programs, and Surge AI as reported by the press. Actual Data accepts applications from companies with 30 to 200 employees, and DataBridge Capital buys some datasets directly and places others with buyers in its private network. All 24, with sourced profiles: AI data vendors.
2. Data marketplaces (16)
On marketplaces such as Grepped, DataVendor (HUD), Protege, Troveo and Wirestock the platform licenses your data to buyers and you are paid a share when a buyer pays. On some you set the price (DataVendor) or approve each deal (Grepped); on others the platform sets the terms (Wirestock). The platforms that publish a split differ widely, so check each one. Protege and Wirestock focus on media such as video, audio and images (Protege also health records and medical imaging), and Troveo licenses both video and business data; Grepped buys chat, email, code and documents, and DataVendor lists codebases, tasksets, RL environments and raw enterprise data. Shfa.ai connects healthcare providers with licensing opportunities at frontier labs and de-identifies the records itself; on CorpusData.ai the seller sets the price and keeps 80% of each sale; DataCow and Big Data/Little Guy also list company chat and documents. Payment usually follows the buyer’s payment. All 16, with sourced profiles: data marketplaces.
3. Wind-down buyers (3)
SimpleClosure and Sunset buy or broker the archives of startups that are closing. Press coverage puts these deals at $10K to $100K per company for code, chat, email and documents; SimpleClosure itself cites deals in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for unique assets. Sunset is also a startup wind-down service that, as reported, values its clients’ assets for its own data resale business, and the press reports that founders have little visibility into who buys the data. Coverage in MIT Technology Review and Fast Company describes the market. Hilco Global lists “Proprietary Enterprise Data, Codebases & AI Training Assets” among the intangible assets its IP practice values and sells, through valuation and disposition that includes brokerage via IP auctions, direct investment and licensing. Profiles: wind-down buyers.
4. AI labs (8)
Google, OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and NVIDIA are the end buyers. Their disclosed deals are mostly with publishers, from $5,000 per book title (Microsoft and HarperCollins, reported) to a News Corp deal with OpenAI that could be worth more than $250M over five years (reported). Direct purchases of company records are rare: Google’s $10M bid for Spirit Airlines’ records in its 2026 bankruptcy auction, reported by CSO Online and TechRadar, is the public example. Several labs are named, mostly in press reports, as customers of the vendors above, and OpenAI and Google run data or content partnership programs. Profiles: AI labs.
Cloudflare’s Pay Per Crawl charges AI crawlers for each successful page retrieval (minimum $0.001 per crawl) and pays the publisher; its Pay Per Use beta lets each AI company set a price for a defined use. It monetizes public web content rather than internal records, so it sits in its own category. Profile: Cloudflare.
How much do data monetization companies pay?
Three ranges have been disclosed in 2026, by the companies themselves, by the press or in court filings.
Published 2026 price ranges for company data licensed to AI buyers
Seller
Range
Basis
Closing startups
$10K–$100K
Per company, for workspace and code archives sold through wind-down services. Largely self-reported by the intermediaries.
Operating companies, 20–500 staff
$100K–$4M
Per license, from the partnership ranges AI data vendors published in 2026.
Large enterprises
$7.5M–$12.5M
Bids for Spirit Airlines’ records (about 100 million emails, 500 million Teams messages and 30 million lines of code) in its 2026 bankruptcy auction, from court filings.
Within a range, four things move the number: how many years the record covers, how many systems it spans, how much visible reasoning it contains (decisions, escalations and handoffs rather than notifications), and whether the license is exclusive. The Spirit auction also showed what one competing bid does: a second bidder raised the offer from $10M to $12.5M, a 25% increase.
How to choose a data monetization company
Six questions separate a good offer from an expensive one. The “Watch for” column records where public reporting has raised each of them.
Who de-identifies the data, and when? Names, customers and accounts should be removed before the record leaves your systems, by a party you can verify, not by the buyer after transfer.
Is the license bounded? Look for a fixed term, a field of use limited to AI training, and resale rights that stay with you. A perpetual exclusive license means you can never sell the same record again.
When do you get paid? Published terms range from under 21 days between first call and first wire (Labelbox) to as long as four or five months from delivery to payout (Troveo). Milestone and revenue-share structures move the risk to you.
Is the end buyer disclosed? Most vendors resell to labs at an undisclosed markup. You should at least know the category of the buyer who ends up with your data.
What does the company disclose about itself? Fees, team, security history and ownership. A March 2026 security incident, a reported 49% stake taken by Meta, or an operator that names no legal entity are all on this page.
How many offers will you see? One buyer sets one price. A broker or a competitive process puts several offers side by side and lets you pick, or walk away.
Every row summarizes the company’s buyer profile, which cites the company’s own pages, filings, domain registry records or press reporting for each fact. Ranges marked “reported” are third-party figures that the company has not confirmed. “Watch for” notes are drawn from public reporting and are not our own claims; “None found” means we found nothing, not that nothing exists. We review the table monthly and when a deal is disclosed, and the date at the top of the page changes when a row does. Bright Info is a sell-side broker and appears in the table as such; the other 70 companies are buyers, marketplaces and other brokers. We review companies that appear on public buyer lists and list only those with a confirmed program or named deal; the ones we reviewed and did not list, with the reason for each, are in Reviewed and not listed. To correct a figure, write to hello@brightinfo.com.
Primary sources for the market figures on this page:
CSO Online, TechRadar and AI Weekly on the Spirit Airlines auction: Google’s $10M winning bid, Mercor’s $7.5M backup bid and micro1’s late $12.5M offer, from court filings.
TechCrunch on the agent-training environment market.
Each company’s own site or pricing page, cited in its buyer profile (linked from its name in the table), for published ranges and terms.
Full list and the method behind the $100K–$4M operating-company range: sources and methodology.
About the author
Erik Rivera is the founder of Bright Info, a sell-side broker that runs sealed-bid processes among the AI data buyers on this page for operating companies’ records. He tracks the buyers’ published terms, pricing and press coverage as part of that work, and maintains this list from it. Before tech and entrepreneurship he was a Naval Special Operations officer and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Bright Info is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. Why he built Bright Info · hello@brightinfo.com
FAQ
Data monetization companies: the questions owners ask.
How much money do companies get for selling their data?
Published 2026 deals run from $10K to $100K for the Slack, email, code and document archives of startups that are shutting down, $100K to $4M per license for operating companies with 20 to 500 staff, and $7.5M to $12.5M in the bids for Spirit Airlines’ business records in its bankruptcy auction. Years of history, the number of systems covered and how much visible reasoning the record contains move the price more than raw volume.
How do I monetize my company’s data?
Four routes exist. Sell or license it to an AI data vendor that resells to labs. List it on a data marketplace and set your own price. Use a wind-down service if the company is closing. Or hire a sell-side broker that makes those buyers bid against each other and negotiates the license on your side. Whichever route you take, check your rights to license the data first, keep personal and client-held data out, and license for a bounded term rather than selling outright.
What are the top data monetization companies for AI training data?
It depends on what you hold. For an operating company’s Slack, email, CRM and ticket history, the active buyers are AI data vendors such as micro1, Handshake AI, Mercor, Polyshares and Telegraph Lab; those that publish a range put it at $100K to $2M+ (micro1, Polyshares) or up to $4M+ (Handshake AI, Telegraph Lab). For a closing startup, SimpleClosure and Sunset buy or broker archives, in deals the press puts at $10K to $100K per company. For codebases, Turing, AfterQuery and DataVendor (HUD) buy or list them. For video, audio and media, Troveo, Protege and Wirestock run marketplaces. Bright Info is a broker that invites all of these buyers to bid on one record.
What is the difference between a data vendor, a data marketplace and a data broker?
A data vendor buys or licenses your data and resells it to AI labs, keeping the spread. A marketplace lists your dataset and takes a cut when a buyer pays (the published cuts differ widely by platform), and on some you set the price. A sell-side broker never takes a position in the data: it runs a competitive process among vendors, marketplaces and labs, negotiates the license for you, and is paid from the closed deal.
Is it legal to sell my company’s data to AI companies?
Usually, with care. Holding data is not the same as having the right to license it. Employee notices, customer and vendor contracts, NDAs and the terms of the software the data came from all need checking, and personal data has to be removed by a de-identification process you can verify. Sensitive categories such as HR files, health records and data you hold for clients should stay out. Have counsel review the license before you sign. This is general information, not legal advice.
Which companies buy data from a startup that is shutting down?
SimpleClosure and Sunset specialise in it, in deals the press puts at $10K to $100K per company for code, chat, email and document archives. Data vendors also buy from closing startups: micro1 runs Defunct Data Partnerships, and Turing has bought failed startups’ codebases (reported). Because employee and customer relationships have ended, the legal review is often simpler than for an operating company.
Do data monetization companies pay for Slack and email archives?
Yes. Team chat and email are the most requested records because they show real decisions, escalations and handoffs. Handshake AI, Polyshares, Telegraph Lab, Mercor and Grepped all list Slack or email among the data they buy, and Spirit Airlines’ package included about 100 million emails and 500 million Teams messages. Most buyers say they remove names and other identifiers before the data is used.
Should I sell my company’s data or license it?
License it, almost always. A sale or a perpetual exclusive license means you can never offer the same record again, and several companies on this page publish those terms. A license with a bounded term, a field of use limited to AI training and resale rights that stay with you can be worth more over time than a higher one-off number.
Don't pick one
Make them bid.
Bright Info invites the buyers on this page to compete for your record, then negotiates price and terms on your side. You pick the offer, or walk away.