Google Spirit Airlines Data: A $10M Auction Win

Google won the Spirit Airlines data auction with a $10M bid

Google won the auction for Spirit Airlines' business data with a $10 million bid. Spirit Airlines stopped flying in 2026 after failing to emerge from its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the U.S. process that lets a company try to reorganize under court supervision. Its attorneys were still handling the disposition of its assets when Axios reported on August 17.

Google agreed to pay $10 million for the business data

Google agreed to pay $10 million for the data in Spirit's systems. The package is emails, calendar information, chats, documents and spreadsheets. A Google spokesperson told Axios that the company acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving its products and AI models.

Mercor, an AI hiring platform, bid $7.5 million as runner-up

The next-highest bidder was Mercor, an AI-powered hiring platform, at $7.5 million. Axios reported on August 17 that Mercor would take the deal if Google's did not go through.

What the Spirit Airlines data package contains

The package centers on about 100 million emails and 500 million Teams chats, and it leaves out passenger profiles. Axios and Bloomberg Law, both working from court filings, list the contents at different levels of detail.

About 100 million emails and 500 million Teams chats

The court filing puts about 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats in the deal. Marketing materials, HR information, project management documents, financial databases, audits and presentations are included alongside them.

Pricing data, code and employee records are included

Bloomberg Law lists pricing data, code and employee records as part of the sale, citing the August 14 court notice and other court filings. It names about 30 million lines of code, development metadata, software models and algorithms, pricing from 7.2 billion competitor flights, and an estimated 7.5 billion passenger transaction records going back to 2008.

The notice also names revenue, aircraft operations, employee productivity, and audits and fraud. Its list continues with marketing campaigns, human resources, strategy and project management, and it puts employee records at more than 175,000, dating back to 1986.

Passenger profiles and frequent flyer data are excluded

Passenger profiles and frequent flyer information are not part of the sale. Bloomberg Law puts numbers on what that leaves out: 97.5 million passenger profiles and an estimated 50.2 million records tied to the Free Spirit loyalty program, along with privileged materials.

How the sale handles personal information

Google says a third party will remove identifying details before delivery, and the buyer agrees not to re-identify anyone. Axios reports the deidentification terms from a court filing and quotes Google's statement on the third-party scrub.

Google says a third party will scrub personal details

Google says a third party will strip identifying details from the data before it reaches Google. In its statement, Google also says it will not receive any personal information from the dataset.

A court filing from Spirit's investment banker states that the data contains no personally identifiable information. Axios reports that the data will be deidentified, which means it will not be associated with individual people.

The buyer agrees not to re-identify anyone

Axios reports that the buyer also agrees not to attempt to re-identify the users. In plain terms, Google has committed not to work backward from the cleaned data to the people in it. The Next Web reported on October 9 that the buyer must make this commitment publicly.

Lawmakers and a union object, and a judge must sign off

Lawmakers and unions objected to the sale, and a bankruptcy judge must approve it. The lawmakers' letter was announced on October 8, 2026, and the union posted its objection in August 2026.

Lawmakers urged Google and Spirit to pause the sale

Lawmakers asked Google and Spirit to pause the sale in a letter announced on October 8, 2026. Representative Steven Horsford and Senator Elizabeth Warren led 119 members of Congress in a letter to the CEOs of Spirit and Google, asking them to protect the privacy of former Spirit employees, according to Horsford's release.

The release says the court findings show the sale would include employee records, timecard records, payroll and tax information and employment contracts. The Record reported the same day that the lawmakers asked the companies to halt the deal.

The Record quotes the letter as saying that removing names, email addresses or other direct identifiers does not necessarily make a dataset anonymous. It also quotes a Google spokesperson as saying the information will either be excluded or deidentified by an independent third party before Google receives any data.

A flight attendants union filed a limited objection

The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) filed a limited objection in the Spirit case. The union posted it on its website in August 2026. The Next Web reported on October 9 that unions for Spirit's flight attendants and pilots have objected to the sale, as has the software maker Springshot.

A judge must approve the sale at a hearing set for Oct. 14

The sale needed a judge's approval, and a hearing was first set for August 19. Axios reported on August 17 that a federal judge needed to approve the deal. Bloomberg Law reported the same day that a sale hearing was set for August 19 before Judge Sean Lane of the bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York (Spirit Aviation Holdings, case No. 25-11897).

The Next Web reported on October 9 that Lucy Thomson, the consumer privacy ombudsman in the case, filed a report on October 5 recommending that the court approve the sale. The report says Spirit and Google agreed to leave out booking and transaction records, refunds, inflight purchases and WiFi sales. Internal emails, which may hold passengers' personal details, stay in the sale.

Spirit hired Tonic.ai to deidentify them, and Tonic.ai must file a certification with the court before every transfer. The report also says the buyer must publicly commit not to try to reidentify the data. Thomson did not assess whether the sale poses risks to Spirit's employees.

The Next Web reported that a hearing was scheduled for October 14, 2026, and that the court has the final say. The case number above lets you check the court record.

Outlets itemize the package at different levels of detail. Saving each report as markdown makes it easier to set the lists side by side, and the URL to Markdown tool does that from a link. Related reporting: Amazon rare books cut up for AI training and EU AI Act 2026: What Applies in August, What Waits.

The $10M bid still needs a judge's approval

Google won the Spirit Airlines business data with a $10 million bid, and a judge makes the final call. Mercor was next at $7.5 million. The package is about 100 million emails and 500 million Teams chats, plus pricing data, source code and employee records.

Passenger profiles and frequent flyer data are excluded, a third party is to remove identifying details before delivery, and the buyer agrees not to re-identify anyone. Lawmakers and unions objected, and a hearing was scheduled for October 14, 2026. The case is Spirit Aviation Holdings, No. 25-11897, in the bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York.