How much is your data worth to AI companies?

The honest answer is a range, and a wide one. Buyers publish ceilings in the millions, while most closed sales from small and closing companies land in the tens of thousands. This guide sets out what buyers publish, what deals have actually closed and what moves a price up or down, with a source for every figure.

How much do AI companies pay for company data?

AI companies pay between $10,000 and $4 million per company in their published terms, with most ranges between $100,000 and $2 million, according to Don't Do It Yourself's comparison of buyer sites, checked October 26, 2026. The bottom of that range is Scale AI's illustrative $10,000 and the top is Endless Data's up to $4 million.

Treat these as ceilings rather than quotes. A published range tells you what a buyer is willing to pay for its best-fitting records. It says nothing about what it will pay for yours until it has seen the manifest and a sample.

What have real company data sales fetched?

Real company data sales have fetched between about $25,000 and $10 million in reported deals from 2026. The figures below are the ones where the price has been published by the buyer or reported by a named news outlet.

Turing's chief executive told Fortune it had bought five to ten failed-startup codebases at an average of tens of thousands of dollars each. Fortune also stated that there is no reliable market average for a failed company's data, and that $12.5 million was the largest figure it found.

AIData.Broker's figures, quoted by Don't Do It Yourself, sum up the gap: a median of $280,000 across buyers' published offers, and a median of $31,600 across public sales. You can see more examples on our AI data deals tracker.

How much is data worth in my industry?

Data value by industry is clearest in Mercor's listings, which publish a company payout range and a size band for each sector. The ranges below come from Mercor's listings as compiled by Don't Do It Yourself, checked October 26, 2026.

Mercor's listings show a separate referral fee for the person who introduces the company. That figure is not the company payout, so do not confuse the two. Our industry pages for law firms, construction companies and software companies explain what buyers ask for in each sector.

What makes company data more valuable to AI buyers?

Company data becomes more valuable when it shows complete pieces of work over many years, with the context linked together and the rights settled. The factors below are the ones buyers name in their own terms.

• Years of history. AIData.Broker and micro1 both say more years of records raise the price
• Linked records. A ticket joined to the chat thread, the code change and the outcome is worth more than each item alone, according to AIData.Broker
• Rare, proprietary knowledge. micro1 reserves its top tier, $3 million or more, for highly unique data
• Size, quality and workflow complexity, which micro1 lists as price drivers
• Settled rights. AIData.Broker and Mercor both say clear rights raise the price and unclear rights lower it
• Situations with judgment in them. MIT Technology Review reported that Surge AI looks for archives showing disagreements and judgment calls to build reinforcement learning environments

Sunset, a rival to SimpleClosure, values assets by headcount, years in operation, data volume and how the team used its tools, according to MIT Technology Review. That is a useful checklist for your own first estimate.

The price of company data falls when a buyer has to carry risk or cleaning cost. Personal data you cannot clear lowers the price, according to AIData.Broker, and so do large exclusions, a hand-picked sample and a manifest that does not match the delivery.

Buyers also discount data they cannot use straight away. Mostly non-English records fall outside micro1's stated preference for data that is primarily in English. Public material, contact lists and data you obtained from someone else rarely add value, because labs can usually get them elsewhere.

Does the size of my company affect the price?

The size of your company affects the price mainly because several buyers set minimums. micro1 looks for established companies with 30 or more full-time employees. Handshake AI asks for 20 or more staff and 3 or more years in business, Scale AI prefers 40 or more staff and Endless Data looks for about 30 or more staff with several years of records, according to Don't Do It Yourself. Polyshares publishes no headcount minimum.

Headcount is a rough proxy for volume and variety. A 15-person firm with ten years of well-linked records can be worth more than a 200-person firm with two years of scattered files.

How much more is an exclusive license worth?

An exclusive license is worth about 2.5 to 5 times a non-exclusive deal, according to AIData.Broker as quoted by Don't Do It Yourself. All four of Polyshares' published deals were perpetual exclusive licenses.

The multiple only makes sense if you are giving something up. Troveo, a licensing agent, says its datasets sell an average of four times, so a non-exclusive archive licensed repeatedly can earn as much as a single exclusive sale. Read exclusive vs non-exclusive data licenses before you choose.

How do AI buyers decide what to offer?

AI buyers decide what to offer by estimating how many useful training tasks a dataset will yield. MIT Technology Review reported in October 2026 that buyers quote very different prices because each values data against its own research thesis, and that no company has published tests comparing training on real-world company data with alternatives.

That is why two buyers can look at the same archive and offer amounts several times apart. It is also why competing offers matter more in this market than in most. MIT Technology Review also reported that founders often have little visibility into who buys their data or whether an offer is fair.

How is data priced per unit?

Some data is priced per unit rather than per company. Video and audio archives are often priced per minute or per hour, and packaged datasets are often sold as annual licenses.

Phyllo notes that research licenses usually do not permit production training, so a low research price is not a fair comparison with a commercial offer. Large platform deals sit in a different bracket again: Reuters reported in February 2024 that Reddit's license with Google was worth about $60 million a year, and Shutterstock reported $104 million from AI licensing in 2023, according to Business Insider.

How do you estimate your own data's value?

You estimate your own data's value by matching your records to the closest published buyer listing, then adjusting for history, rights and exclusivity. These steps give you a defensible starting range before you talk to anyone.

1. 1

   Find the closest listing

   Match your sector and size to Mercor's industry ranges and micro1's tiers. Note the size band, because ranges assume you fit it.

2. 2

   Count what you hold

   Years of records, number of systems, record counts and whether items link to each other.

3. 3

   Subtract what you cannot license

   Remove client work under restrictive contracts, HR files and personal data you cannot clear. Estimate what share of the archive is left.

4. 4

   Decide on exclusivity

   Price a non-exclusive license first, then treat exclusivity as a separate item with its own price.

5. 5

   Test the range with buyers

   Only competing offers on the same records and terms tell you the market price.

Our data value estimator does the first three steps for you. For a written view of likely buyers, a realistic range and the rights issues to clear, book a free consultation.