An AI company wants to buy your company's records. What's going on?

The offers are real. AI companies are paying established businesses, in almost every industry, for years of internal records. But the buyer sets the first number and the deadline. You have more time and more options than the email suggests.

Who's sending these

About eight companies run these programs. The ones you're most likely to hear from are Mercor, micro1, Scale AI, Handshake AI and Mode.

Most of them aren't the AI lab. They buy records from companies like yours, clean them up and resell them to the big labs. Some won't tell you which lab ends up with your data.

The money behind it is real. In October 2026, micro1 said it plans to spend $1 billion on company data over the next 12 months.

What they want

Not your product. How your office runs.

They want to see how work moves between people: a request turning into a quote, a customer complaint turning into a fix, a project moving from one team to the next. Depending on the business, that's work orders, support tickets, client files or project notes. Most buyers also want email and chat, because that's where the decisions get made.

They use it to train AI to do office jobs. The AI practices on a copy of how a real company works, and gets graded on how well it does.

That's why the price depends on your office staff, not your total headcount. A 200-person company with 40 people in the office looks like a 40-person company to these buyers.

What it's worth

Nobody publishes a price list. Buyers publish wide ranges, roughly $100,000 to a few million dollars, and call them estimates.

Your offer is one buyer's opening number. When Spirit Airlines sold its email and chat records in bankruptcy court in 2026, Google opened at $5 million and won at $10 million. Then micro1 came in at $12.5 million. Same records, more than double the opening price, because more than one buyer was bidding.

The deadline, and the payment

Some owners are getting offers that expire in 48 hours. No buyer puts that deadline on its own website. One buyer, Mode, publishes a 14-day hold.

The money doesn't come fast either. Most buyers pay only after they've received and checked your data. Depending on the buyer, that's a few weeks to three months. A buyer that can take months to pay can give you a week to read the contract.

You're early

Very few companies have talked publicly about getting one of these offers. Your peers, your industry group and probably your lawyer haven't seen one yet.

What to do this week

1. Don't send anything. No sample, no export, no "connect your accounts" link. Buyers price after they see a sample, so the sample is part of the deal.
2. Reply to buy time. Say you're interested, you're reviewing it with advisors, and you'll answer in 7 to 10 days. Ask for the full written terms. Our post on the first 48 hours has a reply you can copy.
3. Check who sent it. Make sure the email comes from the buyer's own domain. If someone introduced you, ask whether the buyer is paying them. Some buyers pay up to $100,000 for an introduction.
4. List what they asked for, and whose it is. Files your customers sent you usually aren't yours to sell, and some big customers now ban AI training in their contracts. See what you can and can't sell.
5. Get a second bid. One offer is not a price.