OpenAI←News Corp$250M+ over 5 yearsMeta←News CorpUp to $50M/yrOpenAI←Reddit~$70M/yrGoogle←Reddit$60M/yrApple←Shutterstock$25–50MPerplexity←Time, Fortune, Der Spiegel and others$42.5M pool (shared)Amazon←The New York Times$20–25M/yrOpenAI←Dotdash Meredith~$16M/yrGoogle←Spirit Airlines (in bankruptcy)$10MMicrosoft←Informa (Taylor & Francis)$10M+ upfrontOpenAI←Financial Times$5–10M/yrTwo large tech companies←Freepik~$0.02–0.04 per image
What AI labs actually pay for data
41 deals and 14 buyers tracked, every one linked to where it was reported. Anonymous, sourced, and never brokered. How it works
- Deals tracked
- 41
- With a disclosed price
- 19
- Buyers
- 14
- Seller reports
- 0
Recently reported
View all ›Public
Spirit Airlines (in bankruptcy)
Company workspace data
- Buyer
- Price
- $10M
- Date
- Oct 2026
Authors (class action)
Books
- Buyer
- Anthropic
- Price
- $1.5B
- Date
- Jul 2026
News Corp
News & publishing
- Buyer
- Meta
- Price
- $50M/yr
- Date
- Mar 2026
Wound-down crypto startup
Code & repositories
- Buyer
- Undisclosed (via SimpleClosure)
- Price
- $25K
- Date
- 2026
Wound-down crypto startup
Company workspace data
- Buyer
- Undisclosed (via SimpleClosure)
- Price
- $15K
- Date
- 2026
The New York Times
News & publishing
- Buyer
- Amazon
- Price
- $20M–$25M/yr
- Date
- May 2025
HarperCollins (opt-in authors)
Books
- Buyer
- Microsoft (reported)
- Price
- $5K/title
- Date
- Nov 2024
Time, Fortune, Der Spiegel and others
News & publishing
- Buyer
- Perplexity
- Price
- $42.5M
- Date
- Jul 2024
Reddit
Forums & Q&A
- Buyer
- OpenAI
- Price
- $70M/yr
- Date
- May 2024
Informa (Taylor & Francis)
News & publishing
- Buyer
- Microsoft
- Price
- $10M
- Date
- May 2024
Going rates
Median and range for each kind of data, in its own unit.
Company workspace data
Slack, Teams, email, docs and project tools
$400Kper company
median · range $15K–$10M
n = 5 Public 3 Claimed 2
Code & repositories
Codebases, commit history, pull requests
$25Kper deal
median · range $5K–$100K
n = 3 Claimed 2 Public 1
Business records
CRM history, support tickets, accounting and ERP exports
No public prices yet. Got an offer? Yours could be one of the first.
News & publishing
Newspapers, magazines, academic journals
$19.3Mper year
median · range $1M–$50M
n = 6 Public 6
Books
Per-title licenses for fiction and non-fiction
$4Kper title
median · range $3K–$5K
n = 2 Claimed 1 Public 1
Forums & Q&A
User-generated posts, comments and answers
$65Mper year
median · range $60M–$70M
n = 2 Public 2
Images
Stock photos, illustrations and archives
$0.098per image
median · range $0.02–$0.16
n = 3 Claimed 1 Public 2
Video
Unused footage, archives and made-to-order video
$2.5per minute
median · range $0.7–$7.25
n = 5 Claimed 2 Public 3
Speech & audio
Recorded speech, conversations and audio datasets
$118per hour of audio
median · range $118
n = 1 Claimed 1
Music
Recorded music, stems, sound effects and production libraries
No public prices yet. Got an offer? Yours could be one of the first.
RL environments
Simulated workplaces, tools and tasks for agent training
No public prices yet. Got an offer? Yours could be one of the first.
All deals 41
| Date | Seller | Buyer | Data | Reported price | Normalized | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2026 | Spirit Airlines (in bankruptcy) ~100M emails, ~500M Teams messages, ~176K employee records | Google Big tech | Company workspace data | $10M | $10M per company | One-time Training | Public Source ↗ Google outbid Mercor. The flight attendants' union objected on privacy grounds. |
| Jul 2026 | Authors (class action) Settlement over books from shadow libraries | Anthropic Frontier lab | Books | $1.5B settlement (~$3K per work) | — | Settlement Training | Public Source ↗ A settlement for past use, not a license, so it's left out of the per-title figures. |
| May 2026 | Grupo UOL | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| May 2026 | Grupo Folha | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Mar 2026 | Süddeutsche Zeitung | Meta Big tech | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Mar 2026 | Prisa | Meta Big tech | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Mar 2026 | Le Figaro | Meta Big tech | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Mar 2026 | News Corp News content, 3-year deal | Meta Big tech | News & publishing | Up to $50M/yr | $50M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2026 | Wound-down crypto startup Full codebase | Undisclosed (via SimpleClosure) Undisclosed | Code & repositories | ~$25K | $25K per deal | One-time Training | Public Source ↗ SimpleClosure has handled 150+ deals; 47% of its wind-downs now include a code or data sale. |
| 2026 | Wound-down crypto startup Google Workspace, Notion, Figma and Slack data | Undisclosed (via SimpleClosure) Undisclosed | Company workspace data | ~$15K (pending) | $15K per company | One-time Training | Public Source ↗ Still pending when reported. Sold alongside the codebase. |
| Jul 2025 | Hearst Content for Alexa shopping answers | Amazon Big tech | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Real-time answers | Public Source ↗ |
| Jul 2025 | Condé Nast Content for Alexa shopping answers | Amazon Big tech | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Real-time answers | Public Source ↗ |
| May 2025 | The New York Times Training and real-time answers in Alexa | Amazon Big tech | News & publishing | $20–25M/yr | $20M–$25M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Jan 2025 | AFP Live news feed and archive back to 1983, for grounding only | Mistral Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Real-time answers | Public Source ↗ |
| 2025 | The Washington Post | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2025 | Axios | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2025 | Schibsted | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2025 | The Guardian | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Nov 2024 | HarperCollins (opt-in authors) Non-fiction titles, 3-year license, author opt-in | Microsoft (reported) Big tech | Books | $5K per title | $5K per title | Per unit Training | Public Source ↗ Split evenly: $2,500 to the author, $2,500 to the publisher. |
| Oct 2024 | Reuters Real-time news answers and training | Meta Big tech | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Jul 2024 | Time, Fortune, Der Spiegel and others Publishers Program revenue-share pool | Perplexity Frontier lab | News & publishing | $42.5M pool (shared) | — | Revenue share Real-time answers | Public Source ↗ One pool split across all participating publishers. |
| May 2024 | Stack Overflow Developer Q&A via OverflowAPI | OpenAI Frontier lab | Forums & Q&A | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| May 2024 | Reddit Posts via API | OpenAI Frontier lab | Forums & Q&A | ~$70M/yr | $70M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| May 2024 | Informa (Taylor & Francis) Academic and specialist content | Microsoft Big tech | News & publishing | $10M+ upfront | — | One-time Training | Public Source ↗ Informa reported about $65M+ in AI licensing revenue in 2024 across deals. |
| May 2024 | News Corp News archive and current content | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | $250M+ over 5 years | $50M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ Largest disclosed content deal, about $50M a year. |
| Apr 2024 | Creators and videographers Original footage for Adobe's video model | Adobe Big tech | Video | ~$2.62/min avg, up to $7.25/min | $2.62–$7.25 per minute | Per unit Training | Public Source ↗ Reported by Bloomberg. |
| Apr 2024 | Photographers and contributors Still images submitted for training | Adobe Big tech | Images | $0.06–0.16 per image | $0.06–$0.16 per image | Per unit Training | Public Source ↗ |
| Apr 2024 | Financial Times News content | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | $5–10M/yr | $5M–$10M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Feb 2024 | Reddit Posts for training and grounding | Google Big tech | Forums & Q&A | $60M/yr | $60M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ Reddit's IPO filing showed $203M in total licensing contract value over 2–3 years. |
| 2024 | Shutterstock Images, video, audio and 3D assets | Apple Big tech | Images | $25–50M | — | One-time Training | Public Source ↗ Shutterstock earned $104M from AI licensing in 2023 across all buyers. |
| 2024 | Photobucket 13B photos and videos under negotiation | Several tech companies Multiple buyers | Images | $0.05–$1 per photo (asking) | $0.05–$1 per image | Per unit Training | Talks only Source ↗ Asking price in negotiations, not a closed deal. |
| 2024 | Freepik Most of a 200M-image archive | Two large tech companies Big tech | Images | ~$0.02–0.04 per image | $0.02–$0.04 per image | Per unit Training | Public Source ↗ |
| 2024 | Hearst | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2024 | Condé Nast | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2024 | Time | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2024 | The Atlantic | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2024 | Vox Media | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| 2024 | Dotdash Meredith Magazine and web content | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | ~$16M/yr | $16M per year | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Dec 2023 | Condé Nast, NBC News, IAC Proposed training licenses | Apple Big tech | News & publishing | $50M+ offers (talks only) | — | Training | Talks only Source ↗ Reported negotiations. No deal confirmed. |
| Dec 2023 | Axel Springer News content | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Tens of millions of euros/yr | — | Annual license Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
| Jul 2023 | Associated Press News archive | OpenAI Frontier lab | News & publishing | Undisclosed | — | Training + real-time | Public Source ↗ |
Anonymous seller reports never appear here one by one. They only count toward ranges on the price pages.