What data AI companies buy from businesses

AI developers are trying to build models that can carry out real work from start to finish. What they're short of is examples of that work, recorded as it actually happened: the request, the back-and-forth, the decision and the result. Reported deals have covered Slack messages, emails, Jira tickets and code (Gizmodo, reporting on Forbes, April 17, 2026), and contractors have been asked for everyday work files like documents, spreadsheets and decks (TechCrunch, reporting on Wired, January 10, 2026).

Records in demand

Record	Why buyers want it	Common problem
Support tickets and cases	A problem, the conversation and the resolution, all in one thread	Full of customer names and contact details
Project and issue tracker history	How work is scoped, split up, reviewed and shipped over time	Links out to documents that aren't included
SOPs, playbooks and runbooks	Step-by-step instructions, including the exceptions	Often out of date or unfinished
CRM activity	How deals and accounts move, with notes on why	Contact data everywhere; notes can be thin
Internal wikis and knowledge bases	The context behind decisions	Duplicated or stale pages
Code repositories and reviews	Real changes with the discussion around them	Secrets and keys left in history; third-party licenses
Finance, legal and operations workflows	Approvals, reconciliations and reviews with the reasoning recorded	Highly confidential; needs careful scoping
Chat and email archives	Coordination and decisions between people	Hard to use without the records they refer to; the most personal data

What makes one dataset worth more than another

Complete tasks. A ticket with the full thread and the final resolution is worth more than a pile of unrelated messages.
Recorded outcomes. Knowing whether the work succeeded (the bug was fixed, the deal closed, the invoice was paid) lets a buyer tell good examples from bad ones.
The reasoning. Notes, comments and review discussions that explain why something was done are the hardest part to recreate.
Consistency and volume. Thousands of records in one well-kept system beat scattered samples from ten.
Time span. Several years of history show how processes change and handle unusual cases.
Specialization. Work that few companies can supply, such as claims processing, freight brokerage or regulated accounting, is scarcer and priced accordingly.
Language. Most buyers currently want English. Other languages are wanted case by case.

What's hard to sell

Marketing copy, public web pages and anything already online
Chat or email with no connection to the work it was about
Records so heavily redacted that the meaning is gone
Small samples from companies too young to have real history
Anything you don't have clear rights to share

If you're not sure which of your systems qualify, the assessment gives you a quick read, and our guide to what company data is worth covers pricing.

Common questions

Is Slack or email data worth anything on its own?

It can be, especially from a closing company selling its whole archive. But chat and email without the tickets, documents and outcomes they refer to are harder to use, and they carry the most personal information to remove.

Do buyers want data from any industry?

Demand is strongest for knowledge work: software, customer support, finance and accounting, legal operations, consulting, healthcare administration and logistics. Specialized fields can be worth more because fewer companies can supply them.

Sources

TechCrunch, reporting on Wired, January 10, 2026: OpenAI is reportedly asking contractors to upload real work from past jobs
Gizmodo, reporting on Forbes, April 17, 2026: Failed companies are selling old Slack chats and email archives to train AI