Google to buy Spirit Airlines’ business data for $10 million as part of bankruptcy sale

Alphabet’s Google is set to acquire internal business data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines for $10 million, with plans to use it for product development and training its AI models.

The data being sold includes Spirit’s employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, and calendars, along with marketing, productivity, and operations data, according to court filings.

Google said the data will be de-identified before the sale is completed, and will contain no customer information or any personally identifiable information.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge is scheduled to consider approving the data sale at a court hearing on Wednesday.

Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and has been selling off assets as part of its restructuring process.

The deal marks one of the first large-scale purchases of corporate operational data from an airline by a Big Tech company for AI training purposes.