Google wants Spirit Airlines’ data. Micro1 wants to pay more.

In a sign of just how valuable corporate data has become to AI companies, a little-known startup has swept in to try to preempt Google’s bid to purchase decades-worth of documents, emails, and data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines.Micro1, which was founded in 2022 and is based in Palo Alto, has proposed paying $12.5 million for the trove of records, beating Google’s previous top bid of $10 million. Google itself had beaten out Mercor, which provides data to AI companies, which had bid $7.5 million.

The sale has already proved controversial, with unions representing flight attendants and consumer privacy advocates filing legal objections on the grounds that sensitive personal information of former Spirit employees and customers is contained in the data set and may not be properly redacted or anonymized prior to its transfer to Google.A court-appointed privacy watchdog reviewing Google’s proposed purchase of the Spirit data has said it needs more time to investigate Micro1 if the bankruptcy court considers the company as the buyer. The startup has offered additional privacy promises as part of its bid, as well as offering a 25% price premium.

Consumer privacy ombudsman Lucy Thomson also disclosed in a report filed with the bankruptcy court on the night of Sept.8 that Google had offered to narrow the personal data included in the sale as the parties negotiate safeguards for passenger information embedded in Spirit’s operational systems. Google’s lawyers told her the de-identified data would be used to train AI models.

So far, no sale has received court approval. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 16.

Micro1 got its start helping companies hire engineers. Ali Ansari founded the business in 2022 while........

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