Publicly reported sales and licenses of data to developers of artificial intelligence, newest first. Every deal links to its source.
VerticalScope, operator of more than 1,200 enthusiast forums → Two AI labs, unnamed
Posts from a selection of its online communities
Online platforms
Undisclosed; paid per token of content accepted or by use in AI answers
Confirmed
Associated Press → Anthropic
Real-time news and election data
Publishing
Undisclosed
Reported
VanHack → micro1
Recruiting startup’s Google Workspace files, Confluence pages, Slack messages and CRM records
Company records · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed. The chief executive told Business Insider the offer was “substantial” and that Mercor also made one; micro1 says it pays $100,000 to $2 million per midsize company
A cryptocurrency startup winding down → Undisclosed, through SimpleClosure
Code base; Google, Notion, Figma and Slack workspace data
Company records · Small deal
About $25,000 for the code; about $15,000 expected for the workspace data
Confirmed. Stated by the founder
MyPortal Marketing → micro1
Marketing agency’s internal Figma and Canva design files and Monday.com client onboarding checklists
Company records · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed. The chief executive said client-specific material was not sold
NATIX, a network of drivers with car cameras → An AI lab building world models, unnamed
3,000 hours of multi-camera driving video
Images and video · Small deal
A six-figure agreement
Confirmed. Stated by NATIX
A software company, unnamed → AI labs, unnamed, through Pangea.ai
326 private code repositories with their history
Company records · Small deal
$300,000
Claimed. Claimed by Pangea.ai as its largest deal to date
A 100-person freight broker, unnamed → Telegraph Lab, which licenses to AI labs
Rate quotes, shipment documents, dispatch records, delivery exceptions and claims
Company records · Small deal
$650,000
Claimed. Claimed by Telegraph Lab, which says it paid the business
A 70-person engineering firm, unnamed → Telegraph Lab, which licenses to AI labs
CAD drawings, calculations, technical reports, revisions and project specifications
Company records · Small deal
$450,000
Claimed. Claimed by Telegraph Lab, which says it paid the business
A 60-person accounting firm, unnamed → Telegraph Lab, which licenses to AI labs
Five years of workpapers, reconciliations, financial models and tax preparation files
Company records · Small deal
$350,000
Claimed. Claimed by Telegraph Lab, which says it paid the business
A roofing company, unnamed → Polyshares, which supplies AI labs
Its operational record, under a perpetual exclusive license, anonymized before delivery
Company records · Small deal
$450,000
Claimed. Claimed by Polyshares on its track record page
A general contractor, unnamed → Polyshares, which supplies AI labs
Its operational record, under a perpetual exclusive license, anonymized before delivery
Company records · Small deal
$300,000
Claimed. Claimed by Polyshares on its track record page
A solar company, unnamed → Polyshares, which supplies AI labs
Its operational record, under a perpetual exclusive license, anonymized before delivery
Company records · Small deal
$275,000
Claimed. Claimed by Polyshares on its track record page
A global marketing agency, unnamed → Polyshares, which supplies AI labs
Its operational record, under a perpetual exclusive license, anonymized before delivery
Company records · Small deal
$110,000
Claimed. Claimed by Polyshares on its track record page
A digital publisher in Google’s AI pilot, unnamed → Google
Articles used in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini answers
Publishing · Small deal
About $50,000 to $60,000 over a few months
Reported. Smaller sites in the same pilot earned less than $1,000 over several months
IOP Publishing → Cashmere
Physical sciences books and journals made available to AI applications for answers, not training
Publishing
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Cashmere says it tracks and pays for each use
A Latin American software agency, unnamed → An AI lab, unnamed, through Pangea.ai
6 old private code repositories, from 167 it submitted
Company records · Small deal
$17,000
Claimed. Claimed by Pangea.ai; the license is non-exclusive
Silencio, a 14-person voice data startup → A voice AI company, unnamed
Single- and multi-speaker voice recordings in Tagalog and Cebuano
Audio and voice · Small deal
$250,000
Confirmed. Its largest contract to date
Contributors to Figure’s Index app, unnamed → Figure AI
First-person video of household and workplace tasks
Images and video
$15 million paid to contributors in four months
Claimed. Claimed by Figure; a running total across more than 44,000 weekly contributors, not one deal
Spirit Airlines, in bankruptcy → Google
Email, Teams messages, documents, finance, operations and revenue data, de-identified before delivery
Company records
$10 million, outright sale
Confirmed. Subject to court approval (hearing November 17, 2026). Mercor was the backup bidder at $7.5 million; Micro1 made a $12.5 million offer after the auction closed.
GoPro, for subscribers who opted in → AI developers, unnamed
Subscribers’ cloud-stored video
Images and video
$2 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2026
Confirmed. From GoPro’s quarterly results
Princeton University Press → Cashmere
Selected titles from the book catalog, licensed to AI research tools for retrieval, not training
Publishing
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Sage → Causaly
Full text of more than 400 life sciences journals, read by Causaly’s AI agents for retrieval, not training
Publishing
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Sage says it signed a similar deal with Consensus in January 2026
Vitality Mechanical, a 14-employee HVAC firm in Michigan → micro1
Its invoices, credit applications and payroll work, used to test and rate AI models
Company records · Small deal
$1,000 per task
Reported. The chief executive said he expected to complete 150 to 200 tasks that quarter
GEMA and five music publishers → klang.io, a music transcription startup
About 178,000 rights-cleared sound files from more than 57,000 works
Audio and voice · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed. For note recognition, not song generation
AI Era Corp, a Nevada media company → Anyone Pictures
A short-form drama library, licensed for an AI training pilot
Images and video · Small deal
$955,269 in license fees over nine months
Confirmed. From its quarterly SEC filing; the buyer was a related party until December 2025
Dailymotion → AI developers, through Protege
Its catalog of about 40 million videos, for training and evaluation
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed
AI Hustle, a podcast → AI companies, unnamed
Podcast audio, for general training rather than voice cloning
Audio and voice · Small deal
Thousands of dollars
Confirmed. Stated by a host on the show; licensed non-exclusively
Kled AI, a crowdsourced data marketplace → Undisclosed
A two-year non-exclusive license to contributor-uploaded data
Images and video
$12 million
Confirmed. Stated by Kled
Getty Images → OpenAI
Creative and editorial images shown in ChatGPT search and discovery
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed. A multi-year display agreement; neither company said whether training is permitted
Aerometrex, an aerial mapping firm → Zeromatter Technologies and Neara
3D city datasets and LiDAR imagery from its existing catalog
Images and video
AUD 1.07 million across two contracts
Confirmed
Zedge (DataSeeds.AI) → A technology company, unnamed
Custom training datasets sourced from its creator communities
Images and video · Small deal
A six-figure order
Confirmed. A repeat order from an existing customer
Veritone → Google and NVIDIA
Audio and video training datasets packaged from media archives
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Signed in the first quarter of 2026; Veritone put its near-term pipeline for this business at more than $68 million
A US truck driver on Kled, unnamed → Kled AI, which resells to robotics and self-driving companies
Dashcam footage and photos of potholes
Images and video · Small deal
$8,000 a month
Claimed. Claimed by Kled’s founder to WIRED, which called him an outlier
TelcoPlus (Sharjah, UAE) → A US technology company, unnamed
Studio-produced Arabic drama and film video in Egyptian, Gulf, Levantine and Modern Standard Arabic
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed. The seller describes the buyer as one of the world’s leading AI platforms
Clavis Aurea AI, for Arabic publishers in Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan and the UAE → Wiley (AI Knowledge Nexus)
Curated Arabic-language books and content, offered to corporate customers as AI training data
Publishing
Undisclosed
Confirmed
cielo24, after shutting down → Undisclosed, through SimpleClosure
13 years of Slack, Jira, email and Google Drive records
Company records · Small deal
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars”
Confirmed. Stated by the former chief executive
About 100 shut-down startups → Undisclosed, through SimpleClosure
Code and workspace data
Company records · Small deal
$10,000 to $100,000 each; about $1 million in total over the year
Confirmed. Stated by SimpleClosure
Chegg → AI developers, unnamed
Some of Chegg’s learning content, licensed to companies that may use it to train AI models
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Disclosed in Chegg’s 2025 annual report
News Corp → Meta
US and UK news, including archives
Publishing
Up to $50 million a year, for at least three years
Reported
Richard Pinner, an academic author → An AI company, unnamed, through a small academic publisher
His monograph, licensed for model training
Publishing · Small deal
£500
Confirmed. He opted in, and the publisher kept half of the fee
SourceAudio, for opted-in catalogs from more than 3,000 libraries and labels → Eight AI licensees, unnamed
Cleared, opted-in songs packaged as training datasets
Audio and voice
Nearly $10 million a year across eight contracts
Confirmed
Yelp → OpenAI
Reviews, ratings, photos and business details shown in ChatGPT answers
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Yelp said data licensing helped lift its “other revenue” by 17% in 2025
hc1 → Protege
More than 12 billion de-identified historical laboratory results
Company records
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Offered to AI developers through Protege’s training data platform
StreamGenie’s co-founders → Four AI and enterprise buyers, unnamed
About 1,000 hours of their own expired livestreams and unused video
Images and video · Small deal
About $15,000
Reported. Non-exclusive, for private AI training, with likeness rights excluded
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia) → Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI and Perplexity
Paid high-volume access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia content through Wikimedia Enterprise
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Failed startups, unnamed → AfterQuery
Private production code bases, turned into training environments and tasks
Company records · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed
CNN, Fox News, USA Today, People Inc., Le Monde and others → Meta
Real-time news
Publishing
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Five to ten failed startups → Turing
Code bases
Company records · Small deal
Tens of thousands of dollars each, on average
Confirmed. Stated by Turing’s chief executive
POPS → Troveo
Southeast Asian animation, children’s, film, series, music and short-form video
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Motorvision Group → Troveo
More than 4,000 hours of motorsport and automotive footage
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Arcadia Publishing and its authors → A technology company, unnamed
Local-history books for AI training
Publishing · Small deal
$340 per book
Reported. One author received $1,020 for three titles; other offers were $205 and $355 per title
CuriosityStream → Nine partners, unnamed, including large cloud providers
Video, audio, scripts and code from a library of nearly 2 million hours
Images and video
$8.7 million in licensing revenue in the third quarter of 2025, driven by AI training sales
Confirmed
Getty Images → Perplexity
Creative and editorial images shown in Perplexity’s AI search, with credits and links
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Peter Hollens, a YouTube creator → AI companies, through Troveo
About 1,000 hours of old videos
Images and video · Small deal
$33,000 over the year
Reported
Creators managed by Night Media → AI companies, through Troveo
Terabytes of creator video
Images and video · Small deal
Tens of thousands of dollars per deal, across about five deals
Reported
Guangzhou SunBoy Animation and Toys → AI developers, through Protege
Animated television series and related visual content
Images and video · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Anthill Studios (Lagos) → Troveo
Animated and narrative film catalog, annotated as training data
Images and video · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed
A regional sports rights distributor, unnamed → AI companies, through Protege
Archival sports footage
Images and video · Small deal
More than $250,000 in its first year
Claimed. Claimed by Protege in a case study
Arena Broadcast → Troveo
An African media group’s broadcast video library
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed
A broadcaster in Europe, the Middle East or Africa, unnamed → AI companies, through Protege
Its scripted and cinematic library
Images and video
More than $1 million in six months
Claimed. Claimed by Protege in a case study
Neon Mobile app users → Neon Mobile, which resold to AI companies
Recorded phone calls
Audio and voice · Small deal
30 cents per minute, up to $30 a day
Reported. The app went offline days later over a security flaw
18 early-stage startups, unnamed → Scale AI
Private commercial code bases, used for a coding benchmark
Company records · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed. Scale says it bought the startups’ engineering repositories
Aaron de Azevedo, who runs 20 YouTube channels → An AI company, unnamed
30 terabytes of video footage
Images and video · Small deal
About $9,000
Reported
Kobalt Music Group and Merlin → ElevenLabs
Opt-in songs and recordings from independent songwriters and labels, to train a music model
Audio and voice
Undisclosed; a royalty pool shared with the rights holders who opted in
Confirmed
The New York Times → Amazon
News, Cooking and The Athletic
Publishing
$20 million to $25 million a year
Reported
SourceAudio → ElevenLabs
Pre-cleared production music and independent label catalogs
Audio and voice
Undisclosed
Confirmed
pocket.watch creators → Troveo
Opt-in video libraries from children’s and family creators
Images and video · Small deal
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Man of Many, an independent Australian publisher → ProRata.ai (Gist)
Articles for an AI answer engine
Publishing · Small deal
Undisclosed; a share of revenue based on how much its content contributes
Confirmed
Brick House Media, a Santa Cruz video studio → AI companies, through Troveo
More than 1,000 hours of unused footage from 13 years of business
Images and video · Small deal
More than $70,000
Confirmed
Pro Sound Effects, a sound effects library → Beatoven.ai, through Musical AI
Sound effects for training a licensed music and audio model
Audio and voice · Small deal
Undisclosed; a royalty each time a sound is used
Confirmed
Shutterstock → Synthesia
HD and 4K video of people at work, to train an avatar model
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed. A research license with an option to extend it to commercial use
Video creators → OpenAI, Google and Moonvalley
Unpublished video footage
Images and video · Small deal
$1 to $4 per minute
Reported
HarperCollins → Microsoft, as reported
Nonfiction backlist, with authors opting in
Publishing · Small deal
$5,000 per title, split with the author, for three years
Reported
Dotdash Meredith → OpenAI
Publisher content
Publishing
At least about $16 million a year, plus a variable amount
Reported
Wiley → Two technology companies, unnamed
Academic backlist
Publishing
$44 million in total
Confirmed
Getty Images → Picsart
Getty’s licensed creative image library, to train a custom image model
Images and video
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Rightsify, a production music library → AI companies, unnamed
Back catalog of songs and metadata, plus new music over two to three years
Audio and voice · Small deal
Undisclosed
Reported. The chief executive said the deals led him to hire 24 full-time musicians
News Corp → OpenAI
Current and archived news
Publishing
More than $250 million over five years
Reported
Reddit → OpenAI
Access to Reddit data through its API
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Wirestock photographers and artists → AI model developers, through Wirestock
Photos and artwork, including work made to a buyer’s brief
Images and video · Small deal
Up to $15 to $20 per artwork
Reported
Taylor & Francis → Microsoft
Advanced learning content
Publishing
More than $10 million up front, plus recurring payments in 2025 to 2027
Confirmed
Stack Overflow → OpenAI
Questions and answers through its API
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Financial Times → OpenAI
Journalism
Publishing
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Adobe Stock contributors → Adobe
Short videos of everyday actions and emotions, for a text-to-video model
Images and video · Small deal
$120 per submission; about $2.62 per minute on average and up to about $7.25 per minute
Reported
Freepik → Two large technology companies, unnamed
Most of a library of 200 million images
Images and video
2 to 4 cents per image
Confirmed
Shutterstock → Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple
Images, video and music
Images and video
$25 million to $50 million each at first
Confirmed. Range stated by Shutterstock’s chief financial officer; Shutterstock’s data licensing earned $104 million in 2023
Stack Overflow → Google
Developer questions and answers through its API
Online platforms
Undisclosed
Confirmed
Reddit → Google
Access to Reddit data through its API
Online platforms
About $60 million a year, as reported. Reddit’s IPO filing states $203 million across its January 2024 licensing agreements, over two to three years.
Confirmed
Axel Springer → OpenAI
News, including paywalled articles and archives
Publishing
“Tens of millions of euros per year”
Reported
AudioSparx, a stock music library → Stability AI
More than 800,000 music, sound effect and stem files
Audio and voice · Small deal
Undisclosed; a revenue share
Confirmed
Envato and Alamy → Bria AI
Stock photos, video stills and graphics, to train image models
Images and video
Undisclosed; a revenue share when generated images are attributed to their content
Confirmed
Associated Press → OpenAI
Text archive back to 1985
Publishing
Undisclosed; two years
Confirmed
Shutterstock → OpenAI
Images, video, music and metadata
Images and video
Undisclosed; six years
Confirmed
Confirmed means a party to the deal or a filing stated it. Reported means the press reported it, citing its own sources. Claimed means a buyer, broker or platform stated it about a seller it does not name, so it cannot be checked independently. Values are as stated at the time and are not our estimates. Most transactions are never disclosed.
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