Google pays $10 million for Spirit Airlines' data assets to boost AI training

Google emerged as the winner of a Chapter 11 auction for Spirit Airlines' internal data and bespoke software, submitting a $10 million bid that surpassed rival AI startup Mercur's $7.5 million offer. According to court filings, the purchase excludes any customer or credit-card information, focusing solely on corporate datasets that can refine Google's AI products. Mercur had initially countered a $5 million Google bid with $5.2 million and indicated willingness to pay $7 million for raw data to anonymize it themselves.

A spokesperson for Google said the data could be valuable for training models to handle customer complaints and website debugging. The transaction highlights a growing trend among tech firms to acquire private corporate data as the open internet becomes less useful for AI training, a strategy also seen in other companies' efforts to gather internal usage metrics. The Spirit Airlines representative declined further comment beyond the filing details.