Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

AI and ml Google buys crashed airline Spirit’s data at auction, because AI $10 million buys over 100 million emails, 30 million recorded phone calls, reams of stuff from Teams, Oracle, and SAP Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood APAC Editor APAC Editor Published tue 18 Aug 2026 // 07:43 UTC Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit. Spirit hit financial turbulence when COVID-19 blew in during 2020 and started making losses. Its balance sheet never climbed back to a safe altitude and in May 2026 the airline grounded itself permanently. The low-cost carrier entered liquidation to wind itself up and is now auctioning assets to raise cash and settle at least some of its debts. REG AD A court document [PDF] filed last week reveals that one of the assets up for sale is a huge trove of deidentified data, which Google bid for and won for just $10 million. REG AD For that sum, Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records. MORE CONTEXT 60 years since humanity touched the surface of another planet Oracle and OpenAI's Texas Stargate datacenter expansion reportedly on the skids Don’t blame AI yet for poor jobs numbers, analysts say US state laws push age checks into the operating system 600,000 ServiceNow tickets are another element of the coll…