The unusual way Google is involved in the Spirit Airlines bankruptcy—and what that means for you
Spirit Airlines’s abrupt shutdown in May was unprecedented for the airline industry. Bankruptcy may be nothing new, but Spirit completely dissolving, rather than being absorbed by another airline, marked the first major U.S. airline to entirely halt operations in 25 years.
Travelers mourned the only reliably cheap option in an increasingly costly airline industry. Influencers rallied in an attempt to buy Spirit and turn it into an airline “for the people.” But Spirit ultimately couldn’t be saved, and now, the company is being stripped for parts.
That includes all the standard assets you’d imagine belong to an airline—its planes, real estate, and flight slots, for example—as well as its data. Spirit’s internal communications, spreadsheets, calendars, transactions, frequent flyer info, and more were all up for auction, and on Monday, it was disclosed that Google was the highest bidder, offering $10 million for Spirit’s entire dataset.
What’s all that miscellaneous data worth to another company, particularly outside of the airline industry? Google said it intends to use the data to train its artificial intelligence models. That means any interactions customers have had with Spirit, from purchasing tickets to sending customer service emails, will be going toward Google’s AI development, though the data will reportedly be stripped of all identifying information before the sale is complete.
“We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models,” a Google spokesperson told CNN, also confirming that the purchase won’t contain any personal information about Spirit customers or employees.
Google wasn’t the only AI company interested in Spirit’s data. The second-highest bidder was AI data startup Mercor, which bid $7.5 million for the dataset. On Wednesday, U.S. bankruptcy judge Sean Lane will consider approving the data sale.
Social media is speculating that Google’s winning bid could set a new precedent in the AI industry, anticipating more data sales from bankrupt companies moving forward. “When you hear that data is the new oil, this is ultimately what that looks like,” one user wrote about the sale.
“This is going to be the norm,” wrote another user, adding that most commercial companies are “sitting on a data mine that you can potentially turn into huge profits.”