Guides to selling and buying AI training data
Everything we know about licensing data to AI companies and sourcing it safely. Every figure is sourced, and every guide is reviewed against buyers' own published terms.
For prices, the AI data price index compiles every published payout range, pricing unit and reported deal value in one sourced table, with a CSV download.
Selling data
- How to sell your company's data to AI companies
A step-by-step guide to licensing company records to AI buyers: who buys, what sells, the rights checks, published payouts, timings and how to avoid weak deals.
- What data do AI companies buy?
The company records AI labs and training-data firms buy in 2026, from workplace chat and support tickets to code history and agent traces, and what buyers skip.
- AI data licensing explained: license, sale or revenue share
How AI data deals work: one-off licenses, perpetual exclusive deals, revenue shares and outright sales, with buyer examples and the rights each grants.
- Exclusive vs non-exclusive data licenses
How exclusive and non-exclusive AI data licenses differ, what each pays, which buyers use which, and middle options such as field-of-use and time-limited terms.
- How to build a data manifest buyers will trust
What a data manifest for AI training data should contain, how to count records and hash files, which standards to borrow from and the mistakes that put buyers off.
- Selling data from a closed or closing company
Who can sign, what AI buyers pay and what data protection law requires when you sell code or workspace data from a closed, closing or insolvent company.
- How to sell source code to AI companies
Who buys source code for AI training, what makes a codebase valuable, published price ranges, ownership checks and what to strip out before you license a repository.
- Telling staff and clients about a data license
When and how to tell employees, clients and customers about licensing company data for AI training, what UK GDPR and the FTC say, and how to plan it.
- AI data marketplaces, brokers and direct deals compared
How AI data marketplaces, brokers, licensing agents and direct buyers differ on fees, payouts, exclusivity, payment timing and control, from published terms.
Pricing and value
- How much is your data worth to AI companies?
Published AI buyer payouts, real closed deals and the factors that move price, from years of history to exclusivity. Work out a realistic range for your data.
- AI training data pricing models
AI training data pricing models explained: flat fees, unit pricing, subscriptions, revenue share and milestones, with published ranges and what drives value.
Legal and compliance
- AI data licensing agreement checklist
A clause-by-clause checklist for sellers reviewing an AI data license: scope, derived assets, de-identification, payment, deletion, warranties and liability.
- Can you legally sell company data for AI training?
The legal questions that decide if you can license company records for AI: ownership, client contracts, processor status, privacy, confidentiality and staff.
- UK GDPR, EU GDPR and CCPA when selling data for AI training
What the ICO's anonymization guidance, EDPB Opinion 28/2024 and the CCPA mean for companies licensing records containing personal data to AI buyers.
- De-identification for AI training data
How to de-identify company records before licensing them for AI training: the ICO and HIPAA tests, methods for free text and how to prove the method worked.
- Is selling company data to AI safe? The real risks
The real risks of selling company data to AI: privacy law, client contracts, copyright, re-identification, buyer misuse and reputation, and how to cut them.
- The EU AI Act and training data transparency
What Article 53 of the EU AI Act requires on training data, how the Commission's July 2025 summary template works, the key dates and what changed in 2026.
Buying data
- How to buy AI training data
How to buy AI training data: define the use, choose a sourcing route, check rights and provenance, test a random sample and sign a license that covers training.
- AI training data due diligence checklist
A buyer's due diligence checklist for AI training data, covering authority to sign, chain of title, contracts, privacy, third-party content and samples.
- Data provenance explained for AI teams
Data provenance explained for AI teams: what a provenance record holds, the standards behind it, how to verify seller claims and what the EU AI Act asks.
- How to evaluate a dataset sample before you buy
How to evaluate a dataset sample before buying AI training data: the sample to ask for, the tests to run, acceptance criteria and the red flags to watch.
- How to run an AI training data procurement
How to run an AI training data procurement: set requirements, issue a brief or RFP, score a shortlist, run due diligence, sign the contract and accept delivery.
- How to write a training data request sellers can answer
The fields a training data request needs: domain, volume, time range, formats, rights, exclusivity, de-identification, delivery and budget, with an example.
- How to design a training data pilot before a full license
How to design a training data pilot: audit and training sample sizes, a held-out evaluation, written acceptance criteria and staged payment before you license.
- Sourcing expert and human-generated data: vendors, costs and quality
How to source expert demonstrations, RLHF preference data and red teaming: what Scale AI, Surge AI, Mercor, Turing, micro1, Invisible and Handshake AI publish.
- Buying evaluation datasets: what makes a good AI eval set
What makes an AI evaluation set worth buying: contamination checks, exclusivity terms, refresh cycles and private benchmarks, with the license terms to agree.
- Synthetic data vs licensed real data for AI training
What research says about synthetic data, model collapse and mixing ratios, what model builders report using, and when licensed real data is the better buy.
- How big is the AI training data market?
AI training data market estimates from Grand View Research, Mordor Intelligence, MarketsandMarkets and others, why they differ, and the reported deal values.
Data types
- How to license video and audio archives for AI training
How to license video and audio archives for AI training: reported per-minute prices, who buys footage and speech, and the rights layers to clear before a sale.
- Agent trajectories and RL environments explained
Agent trajectories and RL environments explained: what they contain, why AI labs buy them, the benchmarks that set the standard and what buyers check first.
For data owners
Ready to see what buyers will offer?
Book a consultation and we will scope your data, explain our fee in writing and set out the steps to competing offers from vetted buyers.
For AI teams
Ready to source?
Book a consultation to brief us. We shortlist vetted sellers, each with a vetting file covering rights evidence, provenance and a representative sample.